


Fields of Grey

by Aelys_Althea



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Police, Assassins & Hitmen, Character Development, Childhood Friends, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Moral Ambiguity, Pining, References to Cancer, Reunion, Slow Burn, Special Forces, childhood illness, mafia, plot heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-16 21:33:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 118,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11837469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelys_Althea/pseuds/Aelys_Althea
Summary: Steve strove to be Right. To do Good. That was what his mom had told him second chances were for, and if he owed her memory to trying. Joining the police force, protecting people, was a natural decision to make. For Steve, it had always been black and white, good and bad. Special Forces team SHIELD embodied everything he stood for.Except that there was Bucky. Bucky, who had disappeared for years. Bucky, who was a member of HYDRA, the organisation that was so black in its elusive, criminal endeavours as to epitomise. In an effort to haul his oldest and dearest friend from the snake pit while at once putting down the beast he'd fought to suppress for so long, Steve is struck by an unfortunate revelation: there exists a rather impressive field of grey that complicated things.The world wasn't nearly so simply black and white as he'd initially thought.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~Written for Stucky Big Bang 2017~  
> Thanks to the wonderful mods who've hosted this competition!!! You've done such a remarkable job!   
> And thank you, too, to Mithborien for your fantastic artwork. Dear readers, if you have the chance, please take a look at their work on mithborien.tumblr.com. It's awesome!

The sound of his heavy footsteps was loud. Too loud, most likely. They would alert anyone to his presence who had an ear to listen for him, but Steve didn't care. He ran down one cement-floored corridor, the flicker of fluorescent lights his only company. He didn't even slow when he crashed into the wall at the end of the corridor but thrust himself bodily from the roughened brick to leap down the adjacent hallway.

A door. He saw a door. The thick, fierce gasping of Steve's breath wasn't purely from the speed of his flight. He was angry. So angry that the heat bubbled within him, making fog of his gasps as they passed through the icy hallway. Frustrated. _So frustrated_ , and that _door_ …

Without slowing, boots barely skidding on the floor, Steve charged his shoulder into the door. It crumpled inwards like plywood rather than the splintered timber it was. The crackle of punctured wood was deafening in the otherwise utter silence. Steve swung his arms upwards instinctively, pistol clasped firmly between his hands, and pointed it at the possible enemy. All he got was –

Silence.

Nothing.

Not in the hall and not even, _infuriatingly_ , in the room. Nothing but darkness just barely penetrated by the corridor's flickering lighting. If Steve strained his ears, he could just barely hear a distant _drip… drip… drip…_ from some unstoppered tap. But in that room…

Nothing. No one.

 _"Rogers,"_ a voice muttered in his ear.

Steve didn't reply. Spinning from the room, barely hearing his own growl of frustration, he leap over the remains of the door and into the corridor. Hanging a left, he launched himself down the empty passage once more. Another corner, another left, and he was bursting through another door that opened into a gloomy stairwell of cement steps and rusted bannister.

 _"Rogers, enough,"_ the voice said, a slight sigh to her tone.

Steve ignored her again. He overlooked the necessity of stairs entirely, launching himself over the bannister and maintaining his grasp on his standard issue service Glock only by instinct and long practice. He barely felt the jarring impact zapping through his ankles as he landed, didn't pause for his slight stumble before leaping into full speed once more. The door at the other end of the stairwell didn't stand a chance before his battering-ram force.

 _"You couldn't have slowed down to wait for the rest of us, Rogers?"_ Another voice said, and despite the offhandedness of the statement, Steve heard the frustration echoing his own thrumming through his words.

 _"It's not like there's much of a point,"_ the first voice said. _"They're not here. Alright – Steve, Sam, pull back. It was obviously a false lead."_

No. No, that couldn't be. It couldn't be true. Steve wouldn't _let_ it be true. They'd been chasing HYDRA for years, and though Steve had only been assigned to their case in the past six, he could already feel the weight of gnawing aggravation that bordered on rage for their evasions. They were slippery snakes, elusive, always finding a way to escape impossible situations.

This lead had been the one. Steve had known it was the one, because they'd moved with such speed that there was no way the members of HYDRA could have gotten word of their awareness. No. Way. And yet somehow, in the warehouse that Steve and his team had infiltrated without even pausing for a stakeout, their targets had escaped.

Again.

How many times did that make it now? Steve had almost lost count.

He bowled down another plywood door, but nothing. Another corridor, another stretch of fluorescently lit walls flickering with seizure-inducing twitches, and another door. And another. In each one there was nothing. No people. The odd table, a discarded chair, in one even a television with its blank screen staring flatly. But no one was there. No HYDRA.

Steve was in the bowels of the warehouse. It hadn't been apparent that it stretched so far underground but at six floors deep he'd finally reached the bottom. And here, charging through a final door that held as little resistance as those above, Steve stopped. He stared at the room, as empty as those before. His hands tightened on his pistol so fiercely that his knuckles ached.

"Nothing," he said, and his voice seethed. "Nat, there's nothing."

In his ear, voice slightly distorted by the earpiece, Nat sighed. _"I know. We know, Steve. It was a false lead."_

"It can't be nothing."

 _"And yet it is,"_ Sam grumbled, adding his own equally frustrated voice to their conversation. _"Un-fucking-believable."_

"How?" Steve said, shaking his head. His teeth were clenched as tightly as his hands, jaw all but squeaking. "How could they have found out?"

 _"If not false intel, then maybe a mole?"_ Nat suggested.

" _They'd have to have moved damn fast,"_ Sam said.

Steve nodded tightly, even if his team wouldn't be able to see him. Moles, false leads, faulty intel – they were the ultimate of unseen enemies in Steve's line of work. He'd been an intelligence field agent for years and with each passing year that understanding was only more firmly grounded.

Steve hated tracking the bastards who wrought havoc on his city. He _hated_ it.

 _"Pull back, Steve,"_ Nat said, and it was less of a regretful sigh and more an order this time. _"There's nothing here. We're leaving."_

Steve nodded again. Frustration didn't even begin to cover it. Dropping his arms with a fierce click of his pistol's safety, he turned to leave. And he paused.

The room was empty. More empty even than those above it, without even a scrap of furniture to it. Brick walls, cement floors, a wooden door that now lay in pieces at the entrance. And yet as Steve turned, it was to behold an image strewn in ruddy paint across the wall.

A skull. Six tentacle limbs curled beneath it. A smile that seemed more like a taunting leer. And worst of all, the symbol of HYDRA still glistened with faint wetness. It had only been newly painted.

"Dammit."

* * *

"Damn it all to hell."

Seated shotgun in the car, Steve could only agree with the sentiment behind Sam's words as he kicked a foot beneath Steve's seat. He didn't much appreciate the jostle, but he could understand the need for emphasis.

Nat, apparently, was not so empathetic. "Kick that seat again, Wilson, and you'll rue the day your parents ever gave you feet."

In anyone else, someone of Natasha Romanoff's diminutive stature threatening someone of the size of Sam Wilson in such a way would have been laughable. Steve didn't laugh, and not only because he'd rarely felt less in a laughing mood in his life. Not even when he'd first met Nat had he considered her less than deadly; she was small, but the kind of contained smallness that promised deadliness should one drift too close. There was a reason she was nicknamed 'Black Widow' down at the agency.

Steve barely attended to the exchange. Turned towards the window, elbow propped on the door and knuckles pressing into his chin, he stared with barely contained rage at the sparsely populated sidewalk. Nat said he never truly glared, that Steve's 'glaring' expression was more akin to brooding because "You're not the type of person to get angry like that, Steve," but Steve felt otherwise. He very much felt he was glaring at that moment. Sam's frustrated kicks were empathised with on an innate level.

"How is this even possible?" Sam continued, the growl of his persistent frustration deepening his voice. "We got the intel less than two hours ago."

Nat didn't glance over her shoulder to reply. Like the law-abiding citizen that she pretended to be, she kept her gaze fixed upon the road. Barely a flicker of her eyes towards the rear-view mirror, observed from Steve's periphery, told him she looked to Sam.

Which meant she agreed with him. With his frustration. If Nat didn't agree, she didn't spare even the courtesy of a glance.

"Two hours is long enough to stage a retreat, apparently," she said quietly, words almost muffled by the murmured hum of the car's engine.

"To clear out everything, though?" Sam said. "There was nothing but a skeleton left that could have been in any fucking warehouse in New York. There was _nothing_ _there_."

"Except the symbol of HYDRA," Steve muttered.

Sam cursed behind him once more.

HYRDA was one of the greatest, most prevalent, and most elusive crime syndicates in New York. Maybe even beyond that, for all Steve knew. HYDRA was a menace that, in his opinion, were capable of stretching it's slimy tentacles just about anywhere.

Weapons dealing. Prostitution. Electronic theft on a scale that laughed in the face of the term thievery, with banks stumbling from a debilitating blow in their wake and shareholders left in a rigid state of incredulity after realising they'd been cuckolded for years without realising. And drug trafficking. Drug manufacturing, even. It was the drugs that were the most expansive problem, the most prevalent. To say that HYDRA was specialised would be inaccurate, but that had a very definite flavour to their endeavours. to Steve's understanding, what he'd committed to memory like lore from his college years, crime was the punishment of those who violated the laws, who threatened or endangered the safety, health and welfare of other individuals.

In Steve's opinion, steeled from years in pursuit, HYDRA embodied crime. He'd been given a second chance in his life, a chance that many people hadn't, and he had sworn to make good of that chance. What better good could there be than to combat the ultimate bad? HYDRA was everything bad about New York. Everything and then some, and Steve dedicated his all to suppressing just that. If nothing else, he owned the fates that much.

But it was frustrating. Frustrating because for, Steve and his partners, for his division of the NYPD specifically allocated to the task of suppressing HYDRA – artfully named SHIELD for reasons Steve didn't pursue after countless deflections of his questioning – hadn't caught them. They'd been on HYDRA's tail for years, but if anything the invisible, exploiting hands of the syndicate only grew more multitudinous.

HYDRA was good. Very good, at what they did and how they did it. It was… infuriating.

That morning, the leak he, Nat and Sam had leaped upon had been on a spur of the moment. From a covert source of one of the agents down at the SHIELD base, it should have been valid. _Should_ have. And yet once more, HYDRA had all but spat them in the face. Did they do it on purpose? Were they taunting SHIELD in their attempt to suppress them? Steve didn't know how HYDRA managed to infiltrate their spider web of informants and information, and that was perhaps the most infuriating part of all.

That, and the fact that they'd gotten the call at four o'clock that morning. At not yet seven and with decidedly less sleep than hoped for, HYRDA's taunting disappearance turned Steve's poor mood to mutinous.

And Nat said he didn't glare.

The city of New York never truly slept, but the rising sun highlighted and emphasised the movement of traffic and pedestrians that surrounded their car. Like a nest of ants quietly working abruptly disturbed by that light, gentle chaos kicked up a gear into mayhem. As they drove, Steve staring out the window, Sam grumbling in the back seat and Nat droving with her usual professional detachedness, they made their way from the warehouse and scene that had decidedly lacked success. Again. They'd been beaten again. Steve wasn't sure how much more of it he could take.

Vaguely familiar streets trickled into those more familiar, and by the time mid-morning dawned, Nat was turning down the bumper-to-bumper road towards SHIELD headquarters. In reality, 'headquarters' was a jumped up name for what their particular division of the NYPD called their base. Or more correctly what Tony Stark called their base. Tony was the one who came up with the nicknames for absolutely everything.

Nat parked them in the underground lot and with the infuriated tight-lipped silence that had fallen even upon Sam they rode the sleekly purring elevator to the ground floor. Expectedly, despite the relative earliness of the hour, when the doors pinged open into the spread of the agency basement floor, Steve was immediately buffeted by a riot of noise.

How barely a handful of people could make so much noise was a mystery to him. How only two was more the issue – an issue in the form of Tony Stark.

" – can't just go and touch whatever you want, dammit, Tony!" a voice bellowed across the room.

"On the contrary, it's practically mine so I can do whatever the fuck I want with it."

"You almost lost weeks of work with your meddling!"

"I'd say I improved that work, actually."

"And look at it! Look at my work station and the mess you've made and – and it's all – it's all just –"

Steve heaved a mental sigh as he stepped into the room. It was shaped more like a hanger than a typical spread of office blocks, because apparently the latest and greatest in ideas for workplace cohesiveness was having visible access to one another's personal space. Steve wasn't sure how much he agreed with that but he wasn't going to protest to the higher ups. He'd learned to choose his battles.

Everyone was there. And by everyone, Steve meant _everyone_ , as he could very much discern from the clear visibility of every corner of the desk, chair and machine-cluttered department. Even their boss had a barely more than partitions for his not-quite office. Steve spotted Clint atop his perch of a chair in the midst of a square of desks so loaded with paperwork and computers that it nearly buried Clint himself. His was typing with his usual fervour, a frown of concentration wrinkling his brow.

Alongside him, Wanda sat with legs propped up on her own desk, slouched with a phone pressed to her ear. She spoke in what Steve knew without having to ask was rapid Romanian. To anyone else, the young woman who to Steve had seemed like little more than a teenager since she'd joined them a year before might appear to be slacking. Steve knew better.

Vision – because for whatever reason, Tony's infamous nicknames had stuck him with Vision and Vision only – was at the next desk along. As Steve crossed the room in the direction of the shouting voices, it was to see his fingers dancing so fast over his multiple keyboards that he put Clint's own impressive typing skills to shame. Steve was the first to admit that he wasn't particularly tech-savvy, but Vision made him look like the ultimate amateur.

Though none stopped in their work, each of the three glanced Steve's way as he passed them to draw alongside James Rhodes' desk. Rhodie wasn't working as the others were, entirely ignoring the battle waging between Tony and the murderously glaring Bruce as though it was an everyday occurrence. Which, while it admittedly didn't happen _every_ day, wasn't far from the truth. Tony had an incessant longing to provoke from Bruce what he termed his 'Hulk' rage.

" – so hard to understand that you're not welcome when it comes to _touching my_ _stuff_!" Bruce was saying. He stood propped in the doorway to what was the only real section of the basement floor blocked off from the greater room. Bruce wasn't an angry person, but Steve would admit he did become something of a Hulk when people – Tony – touched 'his things'. Calm shifted to furious, contained to aggressive verbal assaults. _He_ could definitely glare with the best of them. Nat had noted as much on countless occasions.

Tony leaned against the edge of his desk, tossing some kind of metallic device that was probably worth more than Steve's entire apartment between his hands. He appeared entirely unfazed by Bruce's anger, which he most likely was. "And I reiterate: it's technically my stuff seeing as I bought it –"

"With SHIELD's money."

"Which is also my money," Tony pointed out, gesturing towards Bruce with the metal object. "Mine."

"You can't just claim everything in the department because of your donations, Tony," Bruce ground out, all but turning green in his frustration. Steve didn't think he was actually trembling in rage but he couldn't be far off. No one seemed quite capable of aggravating Bruce like Tony. "That's like giving a present and expecting eternal praise of it."

"Well, depending on the present –"

"Dammit, Tony, you're missing the analogy!"

"I've got this," Nat muttered from where she and Sam had paused alongside Steve. With what wasn't quite a sigh, she crossed the room towards Bruce as he began stabbing a pointed finger towards Tony to punctuate his rising words. Steve let her go without comment; Nat had a way of soothing the infuriated Hulk in Bruce that the rest of them lack. Or lacked the desire to attempt, anyway.

"What's it about this time?" Sam asked.

Steve turned towards Rhodie. As ever, Rhodie observed the verbal battle raging between Tony and Bruce with the objective calm and collectedness that he always did. "Tony touched his stuff."

"Yeah, I got that," Sam said, leaning against the edge of Rhodie's desk.

"And he momentarily lost the analysis of Bruce's findings from the seventeenth."

Even Steve winced sympathetically. He might not be a forensic microbiologist or understand much of Bruce's words when he spoke about his work, but even he knew that Bruce's work of the past three weeks was a sore spot. A killing at the drug raid on the seventeenth, speculated to be the work of HYDRA. Scans and fingerprints, blood samples and scrapings, were all sent Bruce's way because, as SHIELD's specialist, he was the one to analyse all things potentially HYDRA related.

"He shouldn't have done that," Steve said. "Bruce is right to be angry."

As if to punctuate his words, Bruce loosed a particularly loud exclamation that was more a wordless cry than anything intelligible. Steve found his attention drawn towards Bruce's doorway in time to see Nat pause at his side, raise a hand and all but fling him into the room with a forceful shove. Her gesture was so practiced that no one could disbelieve it was the first time she'd done just that in similar circumstances. She followed after him a moment later.

Tony pursed his lips as he shifted further in his seat on the edge of his desk. "Well, that's ruining all my fun. Thanks, Nat."

Sam snorted and Steve saw Rhodie's shake his head just slightly, but he was the only one who replied. "You shouldn't provoke him, Tony. He's easily angered."

"You think I don't know that?" Tony said, glancing Steve's way as he tossing the metallic object into the air. Steve couldn't discern what it was any better for seeing it out of his grasp. "It's the only way I can get any kind of fulfilment around here. Even you should know that by now, New Guy."

New Guy. For whatever reason, even after nearly six years and even for the fact that Sam had started at SHIELD at exactly the same time as him, Steve remained 'the new guy'. Even when Wanda and Vision had come along, the name stuck. He didn't know why Tony persisted with the title, except for perhaps that he was hoping to provoke the same response from Steve that he once had.

Steve wouldn't get annoyed again, however. He'd learned better than to state his objection because Tony thrived on disgruntlement. He didn't like the nickname, but he supposed it wasn't all that bad. Certainly better than Captain Righteous, which was apparently Steve's 'official' title, courtesy of Tony once more.

It wasn't frustration for Tony or his provocation that had Steve biting back the urge to grumble. Entering SHIELD and finding a bellowing match warring had momentarily distracted Steve from his morning of frustration that bordered on intense, smouldering rage, but only briefly. In the absence of Bruce's open objection, an objection that had died to muttered complaints audible through his open doorway, the morning's disaster rose to the forefront of his mind once more.

Folding his arms across his chest, Steve pinned Tony with a stare. He shouldn't take it out on him, despite Tony likely deserving it, but he couldn't quite help it. "So you discredit Bruce's work by playing with it?"

Tony snorted. "I wasn't playing with anything. I was helping him."

"Helping him?"

"Fixing it."

"He's the specialist, Tony. Let him do his job."

"Calm your hype, Captain," Tony said with another snort. "There's nothing wrong with supporting a colleague in their work if it affects us all. I'd say my contribution was an improvement; look how much Banner's come to appreciate my automatic back-up system now that it's been tested?"

Tony was certainly in a prodding mood. Steve fought and managed to unclench his jaw, though the cross of his arms he couldn't loosen quite so easily. Tony's seeking 'fulfilment' in his arguments with Bruce was understandable to a degree; after chasing HYDRA without success and with little more than a trail of disasters and footprints to show for it, the satisfaction of a fight was very likely necessary. But did Tony have to provoke Steve too? Bruce had admitted that, despite his at times explosive annoyance, he didn't truly mind Tony egging him on. He'd even told Steve in confidence that, given Tony really had funded the majority of their equipment and more than knew how to use it all, he had a right to it. But Steve? Steve wasn't quite so lenient as Bruce.

Not that morning, anyway. Steve wasn't up to dealing with Tony. To say they were friends wouldn't be entirely incorrect but… not that morning.

Thankfully, Sam stepped in for him. "Can it for today, Tony," he said. "Not today, man. Seriously."

Tony pause in his incessant fiddling to shift his attention towards Sam. To Steve. Then he swung his gaze briefly towards Bruce's door in the direction Nat had disappeared. Everyone, Tony included – or perhaps especially Tony – knew where they'd been but hours before. They were a team, after all. It was simply out of respect for what they knew must have been a failed endeavour that none had asked for a rundown the moment Steve, Sam and Nat had entered the room.

"A flop, I presume," Tony said flatly.

Just like that, his joking amusement died. Bruce's voice and Nat's quietly murmuring replies were all that interrupted the sudden silence. Wanda, Steve noticed from his periphery, had lowered her phone from her ear to focus her attention instead upon him, and Clint and Vision's typing had similarly paused. All watched and waited.

"A flop," Sam said shortly. He glanced towards Wanda. "Thanks for the heads up, by the way. It would have been a good one if it had worked out."

There wasn't any accusation in his words, but Wanda immediately dropped her booted feet from her desk and straightened from her slouch. She looked almost ridiculously young as her gaze shifted between Steve and Sam, eyes wide. "It was a dead end," she stated more than asked, her curling accent thickening. "I am sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Steve sighed. Really, the kid shouldn't feel guilty. "They were there."

"They were?" Rhodie said, abruptly straightening in his own seat.

"They _were_ ," Sam emphasised. "Reckon not even a couple of minutes before us, too, though they'd somehow managed to take even their fucking dust with them."

It might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but Steve didn't correct him. The frustration was back in Sam's tone and likely wouldn't accept correction. They were close, Steve and Sam; Steve would even go so far as to say they were best friends, both as partners at work and otherwise. But Sam, like Steve, had his moments when he was quite simply not in the mood.

"I take it the place is properly abandoned, then?" Clint called from across the room. His gaze was sharp as it jumped between Steve and Sam. He had an unwaveringly hawkish stare; there was little that Clint didn't see and it was that perceptiveness that made him such an asset to the team.

"You'd take it right," Steve said.

"But they left a note of sorts," Vision said. "A sign. Perhaps their symbol?"

Sam clicked his tongue. "Now that's just creepy. How do you do shit like that, Vision?"

"I'm right?" Vision asked, his usual mild, slightly vague inquisitiveness tilting his head slightly. Vision was a beanpole of a man, all angular features and narrow-minded focus. He seemed to function as much like a computer as the computers he so loved to work with. "It was the skull and tentacle symbol, then, I presume?"

"The HYDRA thing, yeah." Sam nodded. "Steve saw it. Right down the bottom in the fucking bowels of the warehouse."

"So not only did they make a mockery of you but they managed to get you to check every room?" Tony's tone was as flat as before, disapproving and slightly angry, even, but Steve knew him well enough to understand that his anger wasn't for Steve, Sam and Nat. Tony hated HYDRA with a passion felt only too completely by those who'd been mocked and beaten time and time again. Steve knew that passion.

"Something like that," Steve said.

"I am sorry," Wanda said again, solemnity casting a darkening her '

"It's not your fault, Wanda," Steve said, crossing the room towards her. "Your intel was about as accurate as possible. We were just too slow."

"No matter how fast we moved we would have been too slow," Clint said quietly.

"Most likely."

Silence fell upon the room. It was another defeat, another failure, and though such had happened so many times before that Steve had almost come to expect they would never get one up on HYDRA, never catch even one of their number that was more that a low-ranking crony, it struck a heavy blow. What would it take? How much struggling did they have to endure before they actually caught up?

Catching HYDRA was Steve's life. It was Sam's life too, and Nat's, and everyone else's in SHIELD. None of them had much of a life outside of work, and that made the suppression of HYDRA that much more necessary. It was like a sore and desperate need, and Steve _needed_ it. Just once. Just one person, one HYDRA snake to fall into their trap. Surely he could be afforded that levity?

"Well, this is a sombre mood."

Steve lanced over his shoulder alongside the rest of his team as Nat appeared in Bruce's doorway. Bruce stood at her shoulder, decidedly less infuriated than he'd appeared before. If anything, there was little besides his usual calm to suggest that he'd even snapped at Tony minutes before.

"Sam and Steve were just telling us," Rhodie said quietly. "Tough luck, Nat."

Nat shrugged. "It happens."

"Always," Wanda said tightly.

"Literally every single time," Clint agreed.

No one had any correction to make to such a blanket statement and Nat only shrugged. "Yeah. Every time. But whatever. Steve, Sam, we have reports to write."

"Ah, my favourite part," Sam muttered.

"Just because you're a field officer doesn't mean you don't have to slog through the drudgery that the rest of us do," Tony said.

"I was under the impression Ms Potts assisted you with much of you own 'drudgery', Mr Stark," Vision said, as mildly as ever.

"Thank you for that contribution, Vis," Tony said. "Just give away my secret why don't you."

"It's hardly a secret, Tony," Rhodie said. "Pepper's made sure everyone knows what a slacker you are."

"I'm only a slacker in the right places."

Listening with half an ear, Steve took himself to his own desk. It wasn't as much of a mess as Clint's, nor as cluttered with computers as Visions or expensive gadgets as Tony's, but it was far from tidy. Steve often found that it was next to impossible to maintain a pristine workspace when HYDRA was concerned. Maybe it was the mayhem and unshakeable frustration of an endless civil war, but something about the entire situation manifested as mess.

Sighing internally, Steve dropped into his seat and absently clicked his computer to life. At the next desk over, Sam muttered to himself as he did the same, Nat passing by them briefly before disappearing behind the corkboard she'd erected in her own space years before. Nat liked to have everything pinned where she could see it.

"I could offer a hand if you'd like," Tony called across the room as Steve began clicking through his computer at a less than enthusiastic speed. He really hadn't gotten enough sleep the previous night to undertake such an unfulfilling task. "Think of it as a favour."

"Not that I don't appreciate you offering that which isn't yours to offer, Tony," Nat said in distracted monotone, "but I'm sure Pepper's got enough on her plate."

"True," Tony said. "But she multitasks like a ninja."

"Remind me why she puts up with your lazy ass," Rhodie said in what was likely meant only for Tony's ears but they all heard nonetheless. Little was private in the SHIELD basement.

"Because I'm wonderful," Tony replied. "I thought you knew that."

"Well, you've told me enough."

"Only because you need to hear if from the primary source. But that wasn't what I was referring to actually. I meant I could offer my own exemplary skills – _not_ Pepper's, thank you, Natasha – to ease the weighty burden placed upon the three of you. I'm a master of bullshitting my way through reports."

"I think that's kind of missing the function of a report, then, Tony," Nat said.

Steve had to agree, but despite his Tony-assigned Captain Righteous persona, he appreciated the less than procedural offer. That Tony had offered at all, and his own assistance rather than Pepper's as Nat had guessed – a not inconceivable guess for he'd done so many a time before – was something. He understood that their job, the job Steve had shared with Sam and Nat in the worst sense of the term 'sharing', had been appalling. Tony was an incessant tease that bordered on bullying at times, but he was a sympathetic and almost compassionate person beneath it all. It said something that he'd been silently funding SHIELD's exploits for years without ever being asked. Offering to help with reports was just another form of that compassion.

"Thanks anyway, Tony, but we're alright," Steve said, sparing Tony a glance and a small, grateful smile. "Really. Thanks."

"Aw, don't go getting sappy on my now, Cap," Tony said, finally rising from his seat on the edge of his desk and skirting it to his wheelie chair. "You might just make me vomit."

"What a tragedy that would be," Sam muttered under his breath.

"Oh, and before I forget," Tony continued loudly enough to carry even into Bruce's room, "we've got a meeting at eleven."

"With Fury?" Vision asked. "I'm assuming it is from Fury that you received the request?"

"Why he always tells _you_ I'll never know," Nat said more to herself than to anyone in particular.

"Because he knows that I'd probably know anything he wanted to say before he actually relays any messages anyway," Tony said.

"True enough."

"Conference Room Three," Tony said. "Eleven o'clock, people. Don't miss it. We've got a wonderful surprise on the table for us. Guests, if you will."

"Who?" Clint asked, pausing in the act of returning to his work.

"No idea."

"Like hell you don't."

Steve sighed, only withholding from scrubbing a hand over his face for the thought that it wouldn't appear particularly encouraging to adopt such melancholy before his colleagues. He wasn't in the mood for a meeting that would likely involve a lot of head shaking and regretful sighs from higher-ups at another failed job, but duty called. Leaning forward in his own seat, Steve set to drafting up the entirely too dry report.

By the time eleven o'clock ticked by, Steve had finished and felt as parched for the dryness of it all as a prune. Throughout the basement with its high ceilings and wooden floors, the rest of his team worked with their usual dedicated yet resigned efficiency. Dedicated and resigned was how they'd been for years; it was the only way any of them could retain their sanity in such a thankless pursuit.

Across the room, Vision still typed at a million miles an hour. Wanda still spoke on her phone, though it was several dozen calls since the one Steve had first overheard. Rhodie was making a mess of paperwork, the scuffle of flapping sheets only seeming to underline Vision's frequent reminded that, "Digital copies are far more practical, James". Rhodie ignored him every single time he said as much.

There was a thumping comingfrom Bruce's room, something that sounded almost like the hacking of a knife, but it wasn't particularly unusual so Steve ignored it. At Tony's desk, what could have as easily been the discovery of a cure to cancer as it was simply an attempt to fix his stapler was splayed before him.

For himself – and Sam, he noticed – it was back to that drudgery that they were all so weary of. Back to skimming through files with a keen eye, watching video footage or reading reports or even flicking through social media with the wide-toothed comb that occasionally snagged on a gold mine. Steve was used to that. He was used to all of it, and it wasn't unusual to find himself wedged between a wall of paperwork and a well of possible leads. None of those leads were quite as good as what Wanda could manage to pluck from nowhere but they were something. Sometimes.

As was to be expected of Fury, when his call to attendance came it was in the form of his face appearing and then dominating Steve's computer screen as it did everyone else's. The expectedness didn't make him any less irked by the image of Fury's bald head overriding the smattering of grainy pictures he'd been studying.

"Alright, princesses," Fury said by way of greeting. "Get a move on. I said eleven."

"You could have told each of us directly if you wanted punctuality," Rhodie said, just as Tony lowered the miniature screwdriver he'd been playing with to gesture towards his own screen with a, "Wonderful to see your beautiful face, Fury, as always."

"Hilarious, Stark," Fury replied, because of course he'd be able to not only see all of them but hear them as well. "Conference Room Three. All of you. Now."

"Even me?" Wanda asked, not quite surprised but a little wary.

"All of you," Fury replied. Then his face disappeared from Steve's screen to expose the pictures that really weren't much more than a grainy mess. Steve likely wouldn't be able to make any use of them anyway.

"He's always such a joy to be around," Tony said, tapping his screwdriver on his desk in a rhythm. "Remind me why we voted him to be boss?"

"He's been the big boss forever," Rhodie said, rising to his feet as Steve did himself. "There was no vote."

"Dictatorship, then," Tony said. He sniffed. "I could think of a better candidate."

"I'm sure you could," Nat said before raising her voice towards Bruce's room. "Bruce, we're heading out."

"Am I coming?" Bruce called back.

"I don't know. Do you want to keep your high-res microscopes? Because I think Fury would be inclined to take them off you if you took to skipping his meetings."

Bruce appeared in the doorway, flipping his glasses onto his head. He only ever wore glasses when he was working on that which required serious concentration. It was like a warning flag of 'Do Not Interrupt' that Steve had long been affiliated with. "Technically," Bruce said, "it's Tony's microscope. Fury has no right to take it off me."

"There, see?" Tony skirted around his desk and crossed the room towards him. He clapped a hand to Bruce's shoulder. "I'm glad we've reached an understanding. Mine. All mine."

Bruce shook his head, and Steve understood what that simple gesture meant. The 'I'll acknowledge your contribution even if I still maintain you're a twat about it'. Steve had felt just way that about Tony countless times.

As one, their team flooded towards the stairwell rather than the elevator and started the climb towards the third floor. SHIELD was only one department of the NYPD, and of that department they possessed little enough space to conduct their pursuing endeavours. It wasn't that the rest of the department and countless other agencies didn't have their ears open, eyes peeled and noses dropped to the scent of anything HYDRA. It was just that only SHIELD, only those on the basement floor, and a smattering of other less than consistently participating members, focused their attention so solely.

That, and Steve knew they were the best. At what they did, anyway. Pride and a little resignation drove the understanding rather than arrogance, for it was impossible not to be when such pursuit was all they were. Steve had slept at headquarters more times than he cared to admit or remember, and most of those times it hadn't been an intentional sleepover. He'd woken with the impression of computer keys on his cheeks for most of those times, too.

The Central NYPD building – one of countless buildings dotted throughout the city and Manhattan alone – doubled as a police station in the same way that a five-star restaurant doubled as a fast-food joint. The halls were long and a myriad of sharp corners and countless doors. Overhead lights beamed down in constant, unwavering illumination, only enhancing the glow of sunlight penetrating through every reinforced window where they stood in place of walls. Rich, polished floors – marble was only in the primary entrance hall but the timber was almost as grand – pervaded every room, and even the air seemed to sting with the scent of grandeur and importance.

Compared to the SHIELD basement, the hangar where Steve and his colleagues worked, it was like the palace atop the servant's quarters. No one in the NYPD made any attempt to hide the fact, despite acknowledging that each and every member of SHIELD from the technologically-minded Vision to the bark-is-greater-than-his-bite Tony could fell any opposing officers in two seconds flat. Steve considered it a part of his job description to visit the department's gym just to remind them of the fact.

SHIELD was unsuccessful in their pursuit of HYDRA, but its members were far from incompetent.

Faces turned with curiosity, peering through doorways as their team passed but quickly withdrew their attention the moment Steve spared a glance in return. That was the way it always was. They were outcasts, but regret for that fact was overshadowed by a fierce desire to fulfil the greater good. Or it was for Steve, at least.

"Remind me again why we're not taking the elevator?" Clint asked as they made their way through the second floor and up the stairwell to the third. "They have them installed for a reason, you know."

"Strength in numbers, my friend," Rhodie said with a glance over his shoulder. As was fairly typical of him, Rhodie was the one who led them to their meetings. He'd been part of SHIELD for the longest out of all of them with the exception of Fury himself. That didn't mean he was any less reluctant to endure their meetings, but it did make his resignation less resistant in coming.

"Meaning?" Clint asked.

"He's calling you fat because the elevator wouldn't be able to hold us all," Tony supplied.

Clint was silent for a moment, staring at the back of Tony's unturned head. Then, "You know, Tony, I'm wearing my hearing aids."

"Is that so?"

"So I do actually know what you said."

"Good for you."

"Are you calling me fat?"

"Actually, muscle weighs more than fat, so…"

Steve shook his head, felt more than saw Sam roll his eyes at his side and knew that behind him Nat's lips twitched in a nearly invisible smirk. There was truth to Tony's words, even if he did joke. If nothing else, the rigorous training that Nat challenged Clint to on a regular basis left its mark.

Steve appreciated the slight lightening of the mood, however. He knew that Tony had known Clint would be able to hear him; Clint never attended their meetings with Fury without his aids, though at times Nat pondered aloud that she could always pinpoint the exact point that he turned them off in those very meetings. At least Sam was smiling slightly, and Bruce was patting Clint's shoulder in commiseration, and Wanda's rigidly straight back had eased slightly. Wanda had never been particularly comfortable in her attendance. Steve put it down to the fact that she was still relatively new.

Conference Room Three was an identical copy of the two on the floor below and the seven upon varying floors above. A wide room, it was one of the few that wasn't ringed with windows instead of walls, dark paint creating a serious and focused ambiance, and the spread of a wide screen like an all-seeing Big Brother opposite the door. The room itself was dominated by a table as polished as the floors in the building's entrance hall, and the reflection of Fury at its head was almost a perfect mirror.

"You're slow," he said without any real aggression, though the moment Steve stepped through the door he could see that he was right in that regard at least. The room was far from empty and they _were_ perhaps a little late.

"Wonderful," Sam muttered at his side and in spite of himself, Steve couldn't help but agree.

Seated around the room, around the wide conference table, were five cleanly and formally suited members of the Asgard Squad. Steve didn't quite know why they called themselves – or were perhaps called – the 'Asgard' Squad. Probably for the same reason that SHIELD was called SHIELD and each of its members had their own secondary nicknames. For that same reason, Steve had come to realise that their department of the NYPD seemed rather taken by the use of acronyms. And nicknames. And mythological references, as was the case with the Squad.

Thor was their team leader. _Thor_ , and after knowing the giant of a man for years, Steve still couldn't overcome his incredulity that he'd actually called himself after a Norse god. It surely wasn't his real names – surely – and yet Steve was oblivious as to what it would be otherwise. Even Tony hadn't known, or hadn't admitted he'd known.

"That's definitely his name, Steve," Tony had said when Steve had asked, because if anyone were to know it would be him. "Thor. Just like Sif's name is Sif, and Fandral's named is Fandral, and Volstagg's name is –"

"Yeah, thanks for the reality check, I get it," Steve had replied, though he really hadn't. He hadn't been quite sure what to make of the slight smile on Tony's lips either; was he teasing him for his ignorance in believing, or for believing the names to be false at all? Steve didn't know and he didn't ask. He assumed Tony would likely tease him if he did that, too, and teasing was often impossible to differentiate from mockery.

As it was, SHIELD and the Asgard Squad had worked together in close association for almost as long as Steve had been a part of the former. While the squad weren't exclusively focused upon HYDRA, their sniffing after the pervasive drug lords that arose like an unshakeably bad smell throughout New York required involvement. HYDRA was nothing if not a key player in the black market. Steve didn't exactly regret their necessary company but…

"You have arrived," Thor boomed, and he may as well have been using a loudspeaker for the volume of his voice. Thor was… well, he was more than simply big. Bold, brash and beefy were similar descriptive words Steve had heard used for him, and he couldn't help but agree with them, if only in the privacy of his own mind. "I had thought you would never reach the conference."

The way Thor spoke always reinforced the appropriateness of his namesake. Whether it was his Swedish background – something Steve supposed had at least a little to do with his naming choice – or something else, he always spoke in clipped, clear and distinct words that seemed to have jumped out of a medieval history textbook. Steve admired Thor in a way, if primarily because he was good at his job and held himself with a respectable countenance, but his speech? Archaic didn't even begin to cover it sometimes.

"Sorry for the delay," Vision said, as formally apologetic as ever. He was always the first to apologise for a perceived slight. "We might have embedded ourselves a little deeply in our work and lost track of time."

"That's not necessarily a bad thing," Hogun said, the lean man as immaculately sleek as ever nodding his head in understanding. "Not at all."

"We only just got here ourselves," Fandral said, clasping his hands comfortably on the table before himself. "Don't sweat it."

"Your courtesy is appreciated," Vision said, speaking for all of them. Or perhaps more correctly, speaking for himself. Steve regretted laxness, but when it came to the Asgard Squad… to say they and SHIELD rubbed one another the wrong way at times would be one way of describing their relationship. One of many.

"While the mutual exchange of apologies is lovely and all, can we maybe get a move on?" Sif asked, her tone as sharp and direct as always was. She spared an almost deferential glance towards Thor before turning towards where Fury sat, quiet and watchful in his high-backed seat. "We don't have all that much time."

"Time?" Steve asked, skirting the table alongside the rest of his SHIELD partners. "Something's come up?"

"You could say that," Fury said, fastening the one eye visible around his eye patch upon Steve. "Take a seat, Captain. We've got a discussion to start."

Overlooking the use of his nickname, Steve did just that. He found himself expectedly between Sam and Nat, and only when the squeaking of seats and the undivided attention of everyone in the room was turned towards Fury did the man speak once more.

He straightened first. He propped his hands, fingers locked, on the table before him. He shifted slightly himself and then seemed to make the effort to meet everyone's gaze in the room one by one. Steve didn't mind the wait; he rarely struggled to grasp patience, and certainly not for the kind of mind games that Fury played. It was Thor who he wagered would be the most likely to crack and demand a continuation of their meeting. Or Tony, perhaps, because Tony wasn't quite brash with his interruptions but similarly often struggled to hold his tongue.

Both managed, however, which was certainly something, and Fury finally deemed them put through the ringer enough to continue. "We've found ourselves a mole."

For a moment, all Steve could do was stare. Those words, those five words, were more profound and telling than any others Fury could have voiced. Unsurprisingly yet detachedly, Steve realised he'd stopped breathing. Stopped, until he found his tongue and spoke. "A mole? And actual mole this time, not just some –"

"He speaks the truth," Thor said, cutting across Steve with his typical thunderous voice. "We have ourselves… a mole."

Something about Thor's expression, his tone itself, gave Steve pause. Thor was all about the chase, about doing his job and getting it done _right_ , and Steve could understand that. Yet his expression was one that bespoke personal investment. Something about this mole clearly struck close to home. Maybe it had been bad chase to snag entrap them, or the mole was a difficult character who –

"What's the catch?" Rhodie asked before Steve could formulate further question. He and each of the rest of Steve's colleagues had clearly noticed something was afoot. "So close behind the last lead –"

"That amounted to nothing and it was always going to," Fury said, and Steve felt Wanda shift in her seat several down from him. Really, Fury could have been a little kinder to the girl. She'd provided them with more leads in the last year than they'd had in the three prior. Wanda didn't speak up for herself, however, and Steve didn't get the chance to and Fury continued. "It's my regret that we have to move so quickly, but this leak – if we act quickly we might actually be able to get something this time.

"So then what's the catch?" Clint repeated Rhodie's words. He wasn't looking at Fury but instead had his gaze locked upon Thor across the table. "Something's not right. What is it?"

Thor made to speak but Fury beat him to it. He was likely the only person that would actually manage to smother Thor's attempts simply because he was so unwavering. "Tomorrow night, Friday the second, we have intelligence to suggest that there will be an exchange of firearms between two parties in covert circumstances. One of these parties are members of HYDRA."

"Firearms?" Nat said flatly. "Really?"

"I'm not comfortable with firearms," Wanda said, shifting uncomfortably. "And I thought HYDRA dealt primarily in the drug trade?"

"They do," Thor said. "Hence we are here at all."

"Thanks for the update," Sam said in little more than a mutter. "Wouldn't have known it otherwise."

"A little respect would be nice," Sif said, all but glaring at Sam. "We're dealing you intel. Appreciate it."

"We're sorry, my lady," Tony said, mockery distinct in his tone. Steve wasn't surprised that he would step up to Sam's defence. He might tease them incessantly in the SHIELD basement, but an outside threat was a mutual foe. "Did we offend your delicate sensibilities?"

Volstagg, hitherto silent and keenly attentive, grumbled in what sounded like a growl. "You watch what you say, Stark. This is no joking matter."

"Who said we were joking?"

"Firearms are not laughing matter either," Thor added.

"Yes, thank you for that update," Rhodie said, the blankness of his expression deceptively mild. "We as police officers wouldn't have realised otherwise, ignorant as we are."

"Well, you certainly act ignorant much of the time," Sif sniffed.

"Ignorance is relative," Vision said. "I'm sure there is much that you are also ignorant of that we aren't."

Volstagg growled again. "You trying for funny talk? 'Cause it's not funny."

"Not at all, I only meant –"

"He was not," Wanda said sharply. "You'd do well to pull your head in."

"You're awfully young to be spouting orders, little girl," Sif said, lips thinning.

"She's not so young," Nat drawled.

"She's practically a child still," Thor huffed. "And you speak of ignorance?"

"Can we all pipe the fuck down?"

Like a knife slicing through the rising aggression, Fury's words silenced them all. He'd always had that effect upon them, SHIELD and the Asgard Squad alike. It didn't matter that he cursed at times in such a fluent manner that Steve found his vocabulary swelling, or that he accompanied his words with a silencing glare. If nothing else, Fury was direct; Steve wasn't the only one to respect that directness and meet it with the attendance it deserved.

Fury's glare grazed around the room. He, like Steve, like all of them, acknowledged that SHIELD and the Squad didn't get along. If there was one of them, perhaps, they might manage; Steve had worked alongside Thor all of once out in the field, and when it was in the midst of action he was agreeable enough. In a conference room was a different story entirely, but they had to make it work because this…

They had a mole.

Throughout the argument, likely induced as much by Fury's words as the Asgard Squad's company, Steve's mind had been ticking over the possibility. A big part of him wanted to leap upon Fury with a torrent of questions. Intelligence? A lead? What was the information? Tomorrow night? An _arms_ dealing? It definitely involved HYDRA?

And on top of that, a mole? Who was it? Where had they come from? Could they be trusted? Who were they in league with? Most importantly to Steve: was it worth using the information they could provide if they were a less than redeemable character?

Steve had a flurry of questions that needed answering and had barely heard the grumbles of argument around him. He was more than inclined to let Fury take the stage, which he did with the ease and fluidity of a practiced professional.

Once more, Fury drew his single-eyed gaze around the room, the eye patch over his left eye glaring just as fiercely to silence those before him. He met Steve stare for stare for a moment before speaking once more. "We don't have time for petty squabbles. A pissing party is for toddlers and schoolboys. I would have thought better of law enforcement officials."

No one looked chastised, but that didn't mean they weren't. Steve had grown to the understanding that, as he himself had, those currently seated around the table were very good at concealing their discomfort. With some things, anyway. Less confrontational things.

When Fury apparently deemed their silence to be enduring enough, he continued. "Alright. So. Getting down to it. Friday night at approximately oh-one hundred hours, an exchange of firearms is set to go down. It's our job to stop it and apprehend anyone on the scene."

"Where?" Nat said, and she was all professionalism once more.

"Dogend Docks," Sif said, any animosity she'd held similarly disappeared from her tone. "Bay Three."

"That's very specific," Tony said bluntly.

"Our mole is specific," Hogun replied.

"Our orders?" Steve asked, gaze still fastened upon Fury. "Or do we even have any? How specific is the intelligence concerning this exchange?"

Personally, Steve preferred to fly with his own orders. He didn't think he was quite the leader to warrant the title of 'Captain', but he was more at ease when it was his own plan put into action. The specificity of the intelligence they were afforded would be a dependent factor as well; the more specific the more of a plan was needed.

"Even in HYDRA, apparently the communal exchange of information isn't exactly equal," Fury said. He leaned forwards in his seat slightly. "What we know is this. The time. The place. The exchange."

"The numbers?" Rhodie asked. "You said it was a covert exchange."

"Numbers are minimal, but there is little enough information to be gleaned besides this fact," Thor said, and as he continued, the edge of his accent crept more fully into his voice. Distress, Steve thought. He seemed just slightly distressed. "Our source tells us that the interfacing parties will be small."

"Small?" Clint said, raising an eyebrow.

"Small."

"The size of a party means nothing if those who are a part of it are competent enough," Nat murmured.

Steve silently agreed to her remark, but as he stared across the table towards Thor, the burly man's lips thinned and brow settled in a frown, concern niggled. "This mole," Steve asked slowly. "Who –"

"Are we're all going?" Bruce interrupted, and a glance his way saw him twisted in his seat to regard Fury unblinkingly. "All of us?"

"That might not be appropriate," Wanda said curtly. "I dislike firearms."

"Join the club," Hogun said.

"Because I'm just putting it out there," Bruce continued, and Steve knew what he was going to say even before he said it. He knew almost to the word. "I'm a microbiologist. I don't do the fighting and apprehending."

"Which there will definitely be," Nat said with a nod.

"You can't tell me that a punching bag didn't feel the imprint of your fists after Tuesday night, Banner," Tony said, sparing him a glance as he raised both eyebrows.

"I'm not a fighter," Bruce said stubbornly.

"Not everyone," Fury said before Tony could counter Bruce once more. "Banner, you'll stay here. Vision, you too."

"Understandably," Vision said with a slight inclination of his head.

"Wanda, I want you on the line the whole time, do you understand me? You'll be in charge of our communication."

"Sir," Wanda said, tipping her own head. Steve caught the hint of a relieved sigh.

"The rest of you, though." Fury swept a finger alongside his gaze around the table. "You'll. Work. Together."

"I think that's easier said than done," Rhodie muttered, to the agreeing nods of more than just a few of the SHIELD members.

Steve frowned. He understood Rhodie's words and agreed with them to a degree, but in this situation they _did_ need to work together. And he might not work alongside the Asgard Squad all that much but he knew that necessity dictated they must. The Squad were good, after all. Unlike SHIELD's frustratingly regrettable struggle with HYDRA, the Squad had been reputedly successful time and time again with their drug busts. They were practically sniffer dogs.

"The more of us that work together as capable officials the more of a chance we have of overcoming them," Steve said, stating the obvious that he knew each member of his team already understood. "So long as the Asgard Squad has no objections?"

Thor shook his head. His fists were clenched as he rested them on the table before him. "We have no problem. My warriors –"

"Warriors?" Sam snorted.

" – are more adept at apprehending drug dealers and the lords of such matters, but we are capable of versatility. We all have the capacity to fight and wield a pistol."

"That's very heartening," Nat said from Steve's side, and he wondered that she could do so and keep a straight face. Thor was – well, he was definitely archaic. "We'll be glad to have you aboard."

"Or you aboard for us," Sif said, primness to her tone and the arch of a single eyebrow.

"Or us for you," Nat said obligingly.

"So wonderful to see you playing nicely for once," Fury said.

Steve heard the satisfaction in his voice despite the mockery. He turned towards Fury just as the man's face hardened from any expressiveness he might have temporarily worn. Then he asked as he'd meant to before, "This mole. He's trustworthy?"

"No mole can really be trustworthy," Clint said.

"As trustworthy as moles come, then," Steve corrected. "More importantly, can his intelligence be trusted?"

A ripple of shifting quivered through the Asgard Squad and Steve reflexively glanced their way. Discomfort abounded, but it was Thor that his gaze rested upon. It was Thor who replied, too, his tone clipped and accent thickening once more. "He can be trusted as far as any mole."

"Which is not far," Sif added, "but…"

"Trusted enough," Thor finished. "I have faith in him."

"Faith?" Steve asked, frowning. The way Thor spoke made it sound definitely personal. "Faith in a deviant? I hate to sound sceptical, but –"

"Do you?" Tony prodded.

" – faith isn't usually something I'd associate with moles," Steve continued, ignoring the interruption. "Once more, I regret that I might sound sceptical but –"

"Do you?" Tony repeated.

"- is it really appropriate to use information from a personal source?"

"Personal," Clint echoed. "You know this guy from outside of work, then, huh?"

'Outside of work' in anyone else would have been a casual association, but the connotations of work were entirely different in law enforcement. For Thor, his mole could be anyone from a drug lord or a runner to an old work friend who'd been lead astray. Steve had confidence enough that Thor would do the right thing as he'd been doing for years in the force, but even so. Personal matters shouldn't be associated with work. Not in their business.

"I do," Thor said, his expression growing harder by the minute. "That I do."

"Pray tell, don't keep us waiting with baited breath," Tony said with an exasperated sigh.

"He's my step brother."

For a moment, no one spoke. No one even seemed to breathe. Steve stared at Thor and it was all he could do to bite back an incredulous, "Please, you've got to be kidding me." It's not that it didn't happen; quite often, and more often than he'd care to admit, Steve knew that families of law enforcers ended up on the wrong side of the fence. That it had to happen to Thor, however…

" _Futu-i,_ " Wanda cursed.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Sam said.

Clint leaned back in his seat, loosing a long exhale. "Well, I guess I should have seen that coming."

"How would you have possibly seen that coming?" Vision asked curiously.

"Yes, you should be so ashamed at your near-sightedness, Clint," Nat said, lips twitching.

"And so the plot thickens," Tony added, because he never had been one to remain apart from contributing to a conversation. "Absolutely wonderful. Is it 'bring the family along to work' day?"

"Tony," Steve said shortly.

"I'm just saying. Does he have a name? A glowing reputation to add to his resume of a mole?"

Thor's expression was positively stony. "My brother Loki is many things, but in this instance I do not believe he is lying."

Silence spread once more. The Asgard Squad eyed the members of SHIELD but Steve barely noticed them. He stared at Thor and it was all he could do not to shake his head incredulously. Really, a name like _Loki?_ With a brother _Thor_? That was just –

'"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Sam said once more.

"Ha," Tony barked in a laugh. " _I_ should have guessed that."

"Do not make a mockery of my brother, Stark," Thor grumbled. "I have little tolerance for such indiscretion."

"Your brother the mole, you mean?"

"Alright, Princesses, enough," Fury said, inserting himself into the exchange with his usual ease. "As wonderfully entertaining as this is – and really, it is – we have a case and a deal to blow. Shall we?"

In an instant, Steve's attention was focused. He could feel that like-minded attentiveness spread through those on either side of him too, straightening the backs and sharpening gazes, and as one the topic of the unfortunately-named Loki and fraternal relationships was dropped. Steve swung his gaze to the screen as it flared to life with white windows already clicked open and pictures from various scenes. From the docks, Steve noted absently. His attention jumped quickly from image to image, cataloguing and committing to memory.

"What we're looking at here is our primary location. Now, from what our mole has suggested, we can expect HYDRA at least to have some security in place. From our last encounter, Asgardians, we can similarly expect to find them in possession of sub-machine guns; Heckler and Koch MP5 if our analysts have any credit to their names. There'll just as likely be…"

* * *

The docks were dark. Very dark, and for more than the depths of night in which Steve found himself. There were no streetlights but for those at a distance, and Bay Three was a ghost house, empty and yawning and silent. Along the docks that hadn't been used for their intended purposes for years, the absence of movement, of life, was starkly apparent.

New York City was rarely still, rarely silent, yet that night at Dogend Docks it was certainly so.

Or at least it was when Steve first arrived. It hadn't changed much in the last hour that he'd been staked out, wedged between a pair of crate stacks that towered higher than his head, but Steve knew it would, because the bust was going to happen. It _was_ going to happen, despite the fact that each and every single time he and his team had attempted to pin HYDRA they'd slithered loose.

This time. This time would be different. It would be different to how it had been barely two days ago in the abandoned warehouse that shouldn't have been abandoned. Two days… it hardly felt like such a short time. So much had happened since.

But Steve wouldn't think about that. He wouldn't consider the plan that he and his team, he and the Asgard Squad, had sketched out and committed to memory like lore. He wouldn't think about the stats that Fury had presented to them, of the weapons that would be used, of the speculated numbers, of the similarly speculated items of transaction.

Firearms. It was hardly new for HYDRA but it had been sometime since they'd gotten wind of a bust of such a nature. HYDRA reputedly focused their efforts on drug manufacture and dispensing. Steve didn't think about any of that either. He didn't think about it because he _knew_ it all, and to think when he was in the field had never been a good idea for him.

_Instinct. In the field, it's just as important to rely on instinct and reflexes as it is upon planning._

In his years on the force, Steve had learned that much.

No sound filtered through his earpiece. None had been heard for minutes on end, and when it did come it was from Wanda back at headquarters, or Clint where he sat in their getaway car should the need for a chase or quick departure be needed. Neither had said anything for a time, and Steve knew why. They were counting down the minutes just as he was. The seconds, even.

_Two minutes._

Steve shifted on his haunches, swapping the knee that touched the ground to steady himself. It wasn't quite cold, despite the early spring casting a chilled rather than lukewarm ambiance to the night, but Steve doubted he would have noticed either way. The thickness of his Kevlar vest, thick, tight-fitted trousers, and dark jacket over the top was insulation enough.

 _One minute_.

He adjusted his hand on his pistol. Service pistol, standard issue, as always. It wasn't wonderful, wasn't exceptional, and Steve had shot with better before in simple practice. But the Glock was familiar and the G17 shot well enough; he'd been using Glocks for years. The weight of a handgun, the feel of the metal beneath his fingers, the grip not quite cold for the pressure of his hands – it was reassuring in a way that Steve detachedly appreciated.

Not calming, however. Steve wouldn't be calm. His heart wouldn't slow and his senses wouldn't ease from their sharpness until it was over. Until those HYDRA _bastards_ were caught. It was idealistic to think they could all be caught, but Steve could dream.

_Thirty seconds._

_"We're on the countdown,"_ Clint said into Steve's ear, his voice just slightly distorted through the earpiece. _"Taking thirty."_

 _"If the timing's exact,"_ Fandral muttered a second later. _"How punctual can we expect criminals to be?"_

 _"When considering a weapons exchange of potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars?"_ Wanda murmured. _"Perhaps a little. Just this once."_

 _They're always punctual,_ Steve thought to himself as he glanced to his watch. The muted green of the digital seconds was barely visible through the darkness. _They were damn punctual in their escape from the warehouse._

 _"Fifteen seconds,"_ Clint said.

Steve shifted again. He edged forwards just slightly, silently, and peered around the edge of his concealing crate. He knew that, like himself, the rest of his team, the rest of Thor's team, were stationed at various points along the docks, congregating around Bay Three and thinning in their numbers in either direction. There weren't many of them, and they didn't call for the backup that other divisions might have deemed necessary, but they would win. They would _beat_ them. This time, they definitely would, because they were the better force.

They had to.

_"Five… four… three… two…"_

Clint trailed off into silence, and that silence, the silence of the docks, the silence that was absent in just about anywhere else in New York City, pervaded once more. Steve peered around the edge of his crate into the inky darkness, the Bay and the empty warehouse that bore not a glimmer of movement. He knew they were there somewhere, _knew_ they would come because they couldn't _not._ How could they not?

 _"Where…?"_ a voice murmured, and Steve was too focused on the darkness, the stillness, to even discern whom it was.

_"They'll be here. Surely, they will."_

_"His intelligence wasn't faulty. I know it."_

_"They'll come."_

And yet nothing.

Steve shifted once more. The tightness of his muscles protested to his unerring tension. The thudding of his heartbeat, a constant sound in the back of his head, grew with every passing second. And with each of those seconds, Steve felt his frustration grow. He was a patient person but this… six years and nothing? And finally a lead that _should_ have been something and yet –

 _"You've gotta be shitting me,"_ Sam said, a growl chasing his words.

 _"Maybe they're just late,"_ someone said.

 _"HYDRA are unerringly punctual,"_ Nat said curtly. _"It must be a –"_

A gunshot sounded. The crack, the echo, the rebounds of that echo – it could be nothing else. Steve was on his feet in an instant. The darkness wasn't shaken, no stillness alleviated, and yet –

 _"Fucking assholes!"_ Tony barked, his voice startlingly loud through the earpiece.

 _"Shit! Shit, shit, shit, not Bay Three."_ A voice that sounded like Rhodie. _"Six. Bay Six, they're –"_

Steve was running. It was dark, there were smears of hurdles in his way, but he was running. Heartbeat pounding nearly as fast as his steps, he tore away form the warehouse at Bay Three, and all but flew southward to where Rhodie was positioned.

Not Bay Three.

Bay Six.

Tony had said it right – the fucking assholes. Steve just wasn't wholly certain which people he or Tony was referring to.

He kept his gun held tightly as he ran, lowered but ready. He all but skidded around another pile of crates and it was to the sound of others' footsteps, the frantic tread of his team, that Steve tore down the docks. The blackness of the air was alleviated only slightly by the grey tinge of distant streetlamps, but it was enough. For that greyness, Steve shed the last of his distant uncertainty of tread and launched himself across the concrete grounds between the Bays.

Warehouses passed in a flash.

The sound of gunfire sounded once more.

Once, twice, then in rapid succession. _Of course_ it would be an arms race.

And Steve ran.

He'd barely caught sight of Bay Four, barely torn past Bay Five to catch a glimpse of the silent warehouse all but identical to that Steve had been crouching beside for a whole hour, when the figures appeared. Not his teammates, Steve knew; he knew because they barked their positions, their actions, who they chased, with the efficiency of trained officers. Even the Asgard Squad knew the drill. But those figures, clad as darkly as they and wielding weapons just the same – Steve knew who they were.

 _HYDRA,_ he silently seethed, picking up his pace to a flat out sprint. _You won't get away this time._

Shots were fired. Actual shots, and it was dangerous, but Steve dove into the calamitous midst nonetheless. It was only by instinct that he ducked as a faceless, black-clad figure spun in his direction, pistol raised and cracked another shot. Steve dropped to the ground, and someone cursed behind him as the deliberate slam of a body bespoke their similar dodge. Not a felling, Steve knew; that curse had been in anger, not pain.

And then he was on his feet again. Steve was standing, and he was running because HYDRA – _dammit, HYDRA!_ – were making a break for escape, for the route away from the docks and they were _getting away_. Steve saw it. He saw those black smears of movement as they flooded into the night, disappearing behind crates and into the deeper darkness of shadows. Abruptly, he didn't think about the deal. He didn't even consider whether the transaction had taken place and what it would mean if it had. He didn't truly know who HYDRA dealt with and just how worthy of his infuriated attention they were.

It didn't matter. He would damn-well catch one tonight. He _would_.

They fled and Steve chased them. There was none in particular he sought, but he sped in their wake nonetheless. Steve was a fast runner, he knew; he could outdistance any of the rest of his team. 'Stupidly long legs' Sam always teased him, like it was a bad thing.

It wasn't. Steve knew it wasn't, because though figures peeled off into the darkness, he gained upon one. Upon one in particular, and that one carried a weight that _could_ have been weapons, _could_ have been cash, _could_ have been enough evidence for a conviction. Steve was so close he could almost taste it.

He would have caught them. Whoever they were, Steve knew he would have caught them, and he nearly did as the figure darted towards the nearest streetlight – why the _light_? – before making a sudden break to the deeper shadows that swallowed the entrance into the docks. Steve followed, jaw clenched so tight that he could hardly breath. He almost would have been able to reach out and catch the escapee.

Except that was when the bodyguard appeared.

It was to be expected. Loki had apparently informed them that all HYDRA transactions were accompanied by at least as many bodyguards as there were transactors. Steve should have expected it, but he hadn't. When the figure sprung into existence before him, seemingly rising from the shadows like a wrath itself, Steve nearly ploughed into them. It was only sheer dumb luck that prevented him from doing so, and that luck, he would reflect, saved his life.

The man – for it was distinctly a man – came at his in a fluid rush. Not with a gun but a knife. In a series of slashes, somehow Steve found himself stumbling backwards and actually dropping his Glock. He _dropped_ it, which was impossible but somehow happened. And he didn't even have a second to lunge for it before the man was on him again.

A slash of a knife, the thud of a bladed edge striking his Kevlar and actually _sinking in._ Steve didn't feel it, but he was still shocked. Stunned, even. Horrified, because it was _so close_. Then he flowed into reflexive action.

Steve knew how to fight. He and his team practiced on one another in the safety of the department gym. They were good at fighting. Great, even. Sam always said that Steve himself was an exceptional fighter, just like he was an exceptional runner. "Stupidly long arms," he always said. Steve was thankful for his stupid arms in that moment. It was likely only that which saved him.

He blocked in a stumble. He dodged in a wayward lunge. He ducked a swinging slice that he swore took off strands of his hair, and he didn't breathe for a second as he did so. Glimpses of the man were all he caught – an impression of dark closes and fitted as his own, of shaggy dark hair, of goggles that were… were they night goggles? Steve didn't know. He didn't' get a second to double check, and hoped to God that they weren't because he was clearly already at a disadvantage in their fight. The man didn't just wield a knife. He was a weapon himself.

A blow to the chest. A slice to his face that managed to cut his cheek. A cuff to the side of his head with what must have been the hilt of the blade because not even a fist could leave Steve's head ringing so badly. In seconds of their confrontation, Steve knew that he was outmatched. Maybe in another time, in other circumstance when he wasn't so surprised by the sudden retaliation, he would have held his own. But then? Then, Steve knew he would lose.

That he managed to get one punch in, a fierce punch to the face that sent the man stumbling, was more a product of luck than skill. The push-kick Steve followed it with rocked him further but only just. It was enough to get his breath back.

For a second, anyway. Only for a second, because after that second Steve forgot how to breathe entirely. He forgot about the docks, about his orders, his duty and responsibilities. He even might have forgot about HYDRA for a second because…

The goggles clattered to the ground. The man straightened, and for a heartbeat his was thinly illuminated by the glow of the street lamp at Steve's back. Face pale, blank, focused, the man stared at Steve for all of a second. The blade of his knife reflected the light in a flash and for that moment, everything seemed to stop.

Steve didn't breathe, but somehow he still managed to utter a single, choked word.

"Bucky?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Well! This was a long first chapter! And, as it happens, all ensuing chapters will be just as long. I hope that's not a problem?  
> Anyway, I hope also that you enjoyed it so far. Please let me know with a comment. Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this chapter contains elements of childhood illness and minor character death. Please read warily if you think this might be provoking for you.

Steve was a sick child. He was the usual sob story wrapped up in a blanket; his father died when he was young and his mom struggled to support him beneath the weight of too many jobs. But worse than that, or worse according to his mother, was this:

When Steve was seven, he was diagnosed with leukaemia. Though he'd only been young, he would always remember the day his doctor spoke to him in words he couldn't understand. Words that his mom clearly did and that broke her into pieces.

For his whole life it was just the two of them. Always just Steve and his mom, and to Steve his mom was his everything. She was the best mom in the world, and he would do anything to make her happy. She staggered home from long hours of work utterly exhausted, and yet she still had the strength to smile for him, to throw them together a simple meal, to wedge herself in their couch alongside Steve and listen as he flicked through one of his few dog-eared books. Most of them he couldn't quite read and simply conjured stories from the pictures, but his mom listened anyway. She always squeezed him with a murmur of, "Such a creative little bumblebee you are, Steve."

Steve hadn't really understood the nature of the endearment, but he loved the warmth of his mom's arms nonetheless.

It had been the worst day in his life when the doctor had told him he was sick. That he was very sick and that he'd have to go to hospital.

* * *

 

 _The man was old. Really old, in Steve's eyes, with his hair starting to grey at his temples. He even wore glasses, and Steve knew that a lot of the time old people wore glasses so the doctor_ must _be old. He sat behind his desk, hands folded before him and shoulders slightly bowed as though weary._

_Steve sat in his own chair alongside his mom. She wasn't bowed, despite the fact that she'd only gotten off her night shift two hours before. She sat rigid and frozen in her seat, expression tight and brow slightly crinkled. Her lips were so thin as to have almost disappeared._

_The tension that radiated from Steve's mom had him shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He was always uncomfortable these days. Tired, too. And sick. Steve got sick a lot, and he was heartily weary of nights spent coughing heavily into his pillow, of days curled in bed with sweat lathering his brow and one moment hot, the next too cold._

_It was uncomfortable. Or maybe it was a little more than uncomfortable. It felt like Steve had been sick forever. It must have been_ weeks, _and weeks was a long time. Such a long time that his mom had decided to skip work one day to first take him to a doctor._

_It had been a whole two weeks ago, that visit. Then there had been special tests, and Steve had his blood taken and… he didn't like those tests but he did them because he was supposed to. He didn't like the feeling of a needle jabbing into the crook of his arm, but his mom sat by his side the entire time so it wasn't so bad._

_Steve had been sick since. As he sat in his chair, uncomfortable and fidgeting for the tension thrumming throughout the room, he couldn't suppress the cough that welled nearly constantly in the back of his throat. He hacked a gasping breath into the crook of his elbow; his mom told him to cover his mouth when he coughed and Steve would always do as she told him. Always._

_As he lowered his arm, the doctor affixed him with a stare. It wasn't a mean stare, not cruel, and yet Steve felt himself shrink into his seat a little for it. Not mean, not cruel, but sad. Steve didn't like that expression. He never liked to see it on his mom, either. Most of the time, he reckoned that he'd prefer to see the anger that sometimes burst from his schoolteacher than his mom's sadness._

_Sad was… sad was bad. It usually lasted a lot longer than anger, too, or at least in Steve's experience._

_Steve didn't know the doctor but to understand that he was 'a doctor' and Steve needed to see him because his mom said he was sick. So he did. Steve always did what his mom told him to do. The doctor seemed nice enough, anyway, if a little sad when he stared at Steve for a long moment before turning back to his mom._

_"Mrs Rogers," the doctor began in a quiet, almost calming voice. "I'm very sorry to be telling you this, but Steve has leukaemia."_

_Steve's mom inhaled sharply. Nothing more than that, and no further tensing of her spine or curl of her hands in her lap. That, Steve thought detachedly, might just be because she couldn't tense any further, couldn't clench her fists any tighter. He glanced in her direction, because to Steve, a word like 'leukaemia' didn't mean anything besides how it made other's react. It was just a word, a foreign word that might have been from another language entirely for all he knew. For Steve's knowledge it practically was._

_He couldn't draw his gaze from his mom as it rested upon her. She was staring at the doctor unblinkingly, her expression entirely unchanging. Or at least it was until the tears started to fall._

_Steve reached for her instinctively. His hand wormed its way into her closed fist with a struggle until she uncurled her fingers to grasp his tightly in return. "Mom?" he asked, almost scared, because his mom's face didn't change but the tears kept falling. "What's wrong, Mom?"_

_His mom glanced towards him, and it was with that glance that her expression cracked from its rigidity slightly. Or perhaps it broke; Steve wasn't sure which. She squeezed his hand so tightly it almost hurt. "It's alright, Stevie," she said before glancing back towards the doctor. "What can we do?"_

_The doctor still wore his Sad Face, but when he replied it was with the formal tones and foreign words that Steve recognised from their first visit. "Well, the good news is that it's treatable. If we get on top of it quickly, initiating his treatment before the virus exacerbates, we might be able to urge his towards remission." Words, all words that when jumbled together didn't make any sense to Steve's ears. None, really, until, "Mrs Rogers, I understand that finances might be an issue for you –"_

_"It doesn't matter," Steve's mom interrupted the doctor, yet despite her words Steve winced. He knew that 'finances' was indeed a problem for them. He might not understand entirely what they were beyond the fact that they meant money, but even at seven he understood that money was a problem._

_But his mom denied it. She denied it as she squeezed his hand and stared the doctor down with tears bubbling from her eyes. "It doesn't matter," she repeated. "We'll do whatever we can. Just get him the treatment."_

_The doctor studied her for a long moment, hands still clasped before him and shoulders still slightly bowed. He looked sad and something else when he stared at Steve's mom, but eventually he only nodded. "Alright," was all he said before he started speaking in his foreign words again. Steve didn't understand him but his mom listened as though he spoke God's words himself._

Steve's treatment had begun right away, and yet it quickly became apparent that it wouldn't be an easy road he'd been set upon. That the state of remission, a sacred word that Steve had grown to associate with wellness and 'getting better', was a long way off. He still got sick in those early weeks, and he found himself growing only more and more tired. Taking days off school became for more than just doctors visits or to spare other kids from his cold. Some days he simply couldn't climb from his bed.

Steve hadn't really been in a hospital before he came to all but live in one. The paediatric ward, another foreign word that Steve gradually grew familiar with, was a wing of bright lights and vinyl floors fading into carpet in the communal areas that didn't hold the bed stations. The rooms were large, the windows on the only outward facing wall wide and curtained, and the hum of machinery, of beeps and flashing lights, was a constant accompaniment to Steve's every day. It was strange, and that strangeness made Steve dislike it immediately. No, it was more than dislike. There was something very close to hatred for the hospital that welled in Steve as soon as he learned that it would be his home for the foreseeable future. He'd never hated anything before. Not like that.

"I'll visit you every day," his mom told him, and he believed her, but visit? Only visit? The thought of not living with his mom, of not having her in the next room where he could stagger into her bed and curl into her warmth when he couldn't sleep – because he hurt, he was too cold, his own coughing woke him up – was nigh unbearable.

Steve cried when he checked into the hospital. His mom cried too. Steve cried for almost the whole day, intermittently yet nearly constantly. He only really stopped because of Bucky.

_They wheeled his bed to the paediatric ward. Steve didn't know why he had to sit in that bed while they wheeled it, but apparently the nurses in their navy and blue uniforms, the doctors in their suits and white coats, had deemed it necessary._

_It wasn't. Steve could walk perfectly fine, even if he did get tired a lot more easily these days. He wasn't wearing any shoes, which could be a problem, but he'd seen other people walking around the hospital in his brief and sometimes not-so-brief visits over the past weeks. Many of them only wore slippers, and some simply socks. Where there wasn't cold vinyl, thin carpet abounded and that looked comfortable enough._

_But he was wheeled. Steve sat in his bed, and the nurses trundled him along corridors and climbed by wide elevators up multiple floors. His mom walked alongside him, holding his hand when she could and ensuring she stayed within his sight when she couldn't._

_It felt a little silly for the bed to be wheeled – Steve wasn't_ that _sick, was he? – but it was kind of fun, too. Given what his mom had told him that morning, what the doctors had said and the nurses had reinforced in their encouraging way, he'd come to understand that he would be staying just a little longer than his previous brief visits. That he'd be actually sleeping at the hospital, in the hospital bed that was a little too hard with sheets a little too crisp and felt nothing like his own bed._

_That though scared him the most. He'd actually be sleeping at the hospital? For how long? The doctors had thrown around words like 'chemotherapy' and 'induction therapy' and Steve didn't like that. He didn't like the foreignness of those words, and the tears had risen of their own accord more than once._

_But the trip had been kind of fun. Steve felt almost like a prince being driven in a carriage, the quietly chattering nurses around him his escort. The only detraction was his mom. Her face was tight again, her brow crinkled, and though she hadn't started crying, she blinked rapidly as though trying very hard not to. Steve hated it when his mom cried. It was the worst thing in the world._

_The ward that would, in time, become only too familiar to Steve was already dotted with other kids. As he was wheeled past them, past their beds and past the open rooms that held four beds a piece, Steve studied them nervously. Some were older than he and some were younger. He didn't think any were his own age, not that he could see, but it was hard to tell. These kids… they didn't look like those he spent time with at school. There was an aura around them, an impression that was as much visible as felt – the paleness, the thinness, the smudges of darkness beneath eyes. Some wore cloth wraps around their heads that looked like bandanas, the material entirely covering any traces of hair that might have otherwise been visible. Each one wore the same gown Steve did; the only difference was the stylised patterns on each._

_They were sick, Steve realised. No one had to tell him but…_

They're sick like me.

_That reality struck Steve the hardest. That he was a sick kid amongst other sick kids, and that he really was going to stay in the hospital until he got better. As the nurses drew him towards a spot in one of the open-faced rooms, the rooms that had three walls instead of four, with the opening of where the fourth should be nothing but the hallway, Steve felt himself tense. As they swung the bed into position, across from another kid with one of those bandana's around her head who sat flicking through a book, Steve's fingers began to shake. And as the nurses finally left him with his mom, sparing a brief word for her and the parting phrase, "We'll leave you to settle in," Steve began to cry. Again._

_His mom was at his side in an instant. She climbed into his bed next to him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders in a squeezing embrace that only helped a little bit. Steve couldn't suppress his sobs, even as she whispered in his ear. "Shush, Stevie, shush. It's alright, you're alright. Everything's going to be alright."_

_Steve wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe that it wouldn't be so bad, sleeping in the hospital with its white walls and white floors and fluorescent lights. He wanted to believe that she would visit him everyday and that would make it all okay. But the reality was that he was a sick kid amongst sick kids and it_ sucked _to be sick. Steve found himself only sobbing harder, clutching the front of his mom's shirt and burying his face in her chest and she held him, rocking gently._

_He wasn't sure how long they hugged one another for. At some point, as Steve's tears still fell but he found the strength to draw away from his mom just slightly, he slumped heavily, exhaustedly, back into his thin pillows. He still held his mom's shirt as he stared out across the room, seeing without really registering, cataloguing without analysing._

_There was the kid with the bandana – a girl, Steve was fairly certain – and she didn't look up from her book for more than a moment to spare a glance in Steve's direction._

_There was another kid, a boy and definitely younger that Steve, in the bed station beside his own. He watched Steve as though he were a television program, wide eyes staring from his thin, pale face. What could only be his family for their resemblance lounged around him in the uncomfortable hospital seats with the casualness of long-familiar visitors._

_There was the nurses that passed down the hallway, their footsteps clicking on the reflective floors._

_There was the bright lights overhead, unwaveringly constant and of a yellow so pale it was almost white._

_There was the spread of wide windows across the wall opposite the hallway, and the view of the city – of sprawling buildings tall and small and the distant sound of trundling traffic, visible and audible through half-closed blinds._

_Steve absorbed details listlessly as he leant against his pillows, against his mom, and listened to her heartbeat as much as her idle murmurs. He would have likely stayed just like that forever had it not been for the boy that burst into the room with a springing step._

_He wasn't wearing a hospital gown. That was the first thing that Steve registered. A school uniform, not a gown._

_The second thing he noticed was that the boy was bright. He had dark hair and dark eyes, but he was so_ bright _. It was in his wide smile that stretched across his face as he all but leap towards the bed station of the boy at Steve's side. It was in the way he giggled as the little boy within that station scrambled to the end, launching himself towards the new arrival._

_The new boy caught the kid. He actually caught him, snatching him from the air as though he weighed next to nothing. The sick kid wasn't big – far from it, even – yet the new boy wasn't either. That didn't seem to matter, however, for he swung the kid into his arms and spun around in a dizzying circle that had the little kid cackling in laughter._

_Bright. The boy was bright, and in an entirely different way to fluorescent lights overhead._

_"I told you, didn't I?" he said as he finished his twirl. He and the little kid entirely ignored the kid's family, ignoring any reprimand for their loudness that might have arisen. Not that any did; if anything, the family turned faint smiles towards the pair as they watched, not a one seeming fazed by the burst of activity._

_"I told you," the boy repeated. "I said I was going to get here as soon as school finished, and I did, right?"_

_"Right!" the little kid agreed in a squeakily high voice. "You did, Bucky, you did!"_

_"Before four, I said."_

_"Before four!"_

_"And what does that clock say?" The new kid, the Bucky boy, twisted with the little boy still in his arms and nodded his head towards the clock on the hallway wall. "It says before four o'clock, right?"_

_"It does!"_

_The little boy dissolved into a riot of giggles once more as Bucky tossed him – actually_ tossed _him_ _– into the air and caught him again. Peals of laughter echoed throughout the room, louder for the openness as the sound rebounded off the walls, and Steve could only stare at that which was so vastly different to how the hospital had seemed, had_ been _, but moments before. He wasn't the only one either; the reading girl and the one who had been fitfully sleeping in the bed station alongside her, diagonal to Steve, both watched as well. They wore the hint of a smile, each of them, too._

_Bucky and the little kid were a stage performance in the middle of the room, twirling and chattering and laughing, and Steve was engrossed in watching until a barked shout sounded from the hallway. Bucky froze as the words snapped in reprimand. "James Buchanan Barnes, are you making a ruckus and terrorising children again?"_

_Bucky, the one who Steve thought was called Bucky, glanced with wide eyes towards the hallway, but a grin still played upon his lips. He leant his head towards that of the little boy in his arms and whispered something in a series of hisses before raising his voice in reply. "No, Mom!"_

_"Are you lying to me?"_

_"No, Mom!"_

_"James, don't give me cheek." The sound of clipping footsteps clacked down the hallway and in an instant a woman appeared around the corner. Tall and thin, Steve vaguely recognised her from when he'd entered the ward, his carriage-bed briefly bypassing the desk that only later he would learn was called the 'Nurse's Station'. She was as dark-haired and dark-eyed as the Bucky boy. Or James; Steve wasn't sure what his name was anymore._

_The woman propped her hands on her hips as she pinned Bucky-James with a glare. "Are you upsetting Michael?" she said curtly._

_"No, Mom," Bucky-James said, his grin finally sliding from his face. "I wasn't. We were just playing."_

_"We were just playing," the kid in his arms echoed, more subdued than before as he curled slightly into Bucky-James._

_"Michael has just gotten back from his tests," the nurse said, voice as sharp as before. "He needs to rest, so I don't want you tiring him out. Put him back in his bed." And she pointed towards the little kid's – towards Michael's – bed with a gesture as sharp as her words._

_"Yes, Mom," Bucky-James said, and with a trotting step – because he didn't seem capable of moving with anything less than a bounce – he deposited Michael on his thin mattress._

_The nurse sighed, turning towards Michael's family. "I'm sorry about this Mr and Mrs Parks. I'll make sure he keeps his exploits to himself for the rest of the afternoon."_

_"It's no trouble," a man who must have been Mr Parks replied. He smiled at Michael and then at Bucky-James just as fondly. "Michael wasn't really resting anyway."_

_"Hm," the nurse said, but her attention was back on Bucky-James once more. She pointed at him again and he bowed his head remorsefully. "Keep it down. No craziness, or I'm sending you downstairs with Anna."_

_"But Mom -!" Bucky-James protested._

_"No buts," the nurse replied. "If I hear a peep from you from the nurse's station, Bucky, you're out." The she turned on her heel and, with only a brief nod towards the Powers once more, left the open room._

_Steve stared at the back of Bucky's head as he watched his mom leave. It was only in the momentary lull of her departure that Steve realised he'd stopped crying completely. Bucky's arrival, his enthusiasm and Michael's jubilation, had certainly been a distraction from his melancholy. Though Steve found that he still plucked idly at his mom's shirt, his grasp had unconsciously loosened just slightly._

_Bucky's quietness and remorse lasted for all of half a minute after his mom's departure before shattering. When he turned towards Michael's bed, he wore a grin once more that he flashed towards Mr and Mrs Parks. Then he affixed Michael with his vibrant smile, leaning with both hands upon the end of his bed. "We've got to be quiet, okay, Mikey?" he stage-whispered. "Otherwise the dragon-lady will come swooping down again."_

_"Dragon-lady?" Michael echoed, parroting again as he had each of Bucky's words._

_Bucky nodded solemnly, an effect lost somewhat by the ear-to-ear smile that remained hanging from his lips. "Yup. Really quiet." And then he glanced towards Steve._

_Steve wasn't sure why Bucky noticed him. He hadn't made a sound, hadn't so much as moved to draw attention to himself, and yet Bucky turned. He stared at Steve curiously for a moment before pushing himself off the end of Michael's bed and trotting with his bouncing step towards Steve's. He didn't seem to notice when Steve shrunk slightly into his mom, simply leaning with a heavy thump onto the end of the bed with his elbows this time instead of his hands. He beamed up at Steve, and he could have been his own personal sun._

_"Hello!" he said with perhaps more enthusiasm than was warranted. "You're new."_

_Steve stared at him, blinking. This boy, this loud boy in his school uniform that made the little kid laugh and the two quiet girls across from him actually smile, was strange. Why was he in the hospital? Was he sick too? He didn't look like he was._

_Despite his confusion, however, Steve found himself speaking before he realised it. "I know I am," he said, his voice thick, croaking slightly in the aftermath of tears._

_Bucky only grinned at him, seemingly disregarding or perhaps not even noticing the rudeness that Steve only belatedly realised he'd spoken with. "That's cool. I guess you're part of the family now then, hm?"_

_Steve stared some more. "The family?"_

_"We're all just one big, happy family here," the girl across from Steve said, and by her voice Steve realised she was older than he'd first realised. Older than him by more._

_Bucky nodded, either overlooking or once more disregarding the touch of sarcasm to the girl's words. "Yep. And you're going to be a part of it now. It's nice to meet you." He glanced up at Steve's mom. "Nice to meet you too, ma'am."_

_Steve felt his mom shift against him, straightening slightly. "Well, that's a lovely welcome if ever I've heard one. Isn't it, Steve?" She squeezed Steve's shoulders slightly but didn't seem to need a reply. "And it's nice to meet you too, young man. You can call me Sarah if you'd like."_

_"Alright, Mrs Sarah," Bucky replied. He stuck out a hand that was pointed halfway between Steve and his mom. "My name's Bucky."_

_Steve's mom didn't take the proffered hand, so slowly, hesitantly, Steve did so himself. He wasn't usually a hesitant person, not really, but he was tired, and hurting, and the hospital was just a little daunting. The act of shaking Bucky's hand seemed momentous, though slightly less so when Bucky grasped his fingers in a warm clasp and pumped with his persistent enthusiasm._

_"This is Steve, Bucky," Steve's mom said. "He's only just moved up here today."_

_"Steve," Bucky repeated, sounding the word out. He nodded once. "Cool. That's cool. It's nice to meet you, Steve. We're going to be friends, alright? I'm friends with everyone here, so you can be my friend too. I'm always, always at the hospital, so whenever you feel like your well enough to play, even just for a little bit, you can play with me, alright? Right?"_

_Steve stared at Bucky as, not waiting for a reply, he continued at a rapid-fire pace. He introduced the rest of the kids in Steve's open room, those in the rest of the ward with labels like, "He's got a really pointy nose" or "She always carries around a fluffy elephant with her". Then came the nurses, then a run down of 'Activity Time' and when dinner was served, and… and…_

_Steve was afforded a crash course of absolutely everything he could possibly need to know in the space of only ten minutes. By the time those ten minutes passed – a time in which Michael had made his way over to Steve's bed too and clambered up Bucky's legs to hang with utter comfort from his back – Steve almost forgot he was sad. He almost forgot that his mom wouldn't be sleeping in the room next to him anymore or that he could be in hospital for a long, long time._

_At that point, Steve would reflect in years to come, he'd already accepted that Bucky was his friend._

* * *

 

Bucky hadn't been a 'sick kid'. He was different to the rest of those on Steve's ward, but it wasn't only because he was well when the rest of them, Steve included, were bedridden for most of their days. It was because Bucky was happy. He was bright. He was enthusiastic and always joking and asking questions, and wherever he went a trail of laughter and good-humour followed.

Bucky's mom was a nurse that worked in the paediatric ward. She'd been there for only a year – or so Bucky had said – but in that time Bucky had firmly embedded himself in the day-to-day lives of the resident children on the ward. He was as much an integral part of that ward as anyone; his family, far from well-off, scraped by a living through his mother's wages. Steve wasn't sure what Bucky's father did and he didn't ask; Bucky never spoke of him, except to say that, "Dad can't look after me in the afternoon so I just come here."

Steve was blessed for that. _Bucky_ was a blessing. The hospital itself was far from Steve's list of places he'd enjoyed in his short life – it was just little too cold, a little cavernous, and the food wasn't nearly as good as Steve's mom's. More than that, when Steve started to get his therapy and he got sicker, and his hair started falling out, and he threw back up just about anything he put in his mouth…

Steve didn't have a reason to like the hospital, even if the nurses were nice and the doctors were always gentle. Even if the rest of the kids – Michael and Jenny and Keith and Joe – were nice enough. Because Steve's mom couldn't be there all the time, wasn't allowed to stay the night, and she wasn't always there to hold him when he hurt. Because he wasn't allowed home even if he felt a little better some days. Because, even if he felt inclined to play, he wasn't really _supposed_ to, and on the days where he wandered around the ward – or, forbid it, _beyond_ the ward – he grew tired so quickly that it wasn't much fun at all. Steve couldn't run like he used to be able to because it was _tiring._ Not even the art groups or the teacher-led play times between hours of tutelage were all that enjoyable. Not to Steve.

It was Bucky that saved him from that. Bucky who knew how to have fun when Steve wasn't quite able to play in the same way that he used to. Bucky clearly had a history of spending time with kids that at times couldn't even make it from their beds. He would speak when Steve or the rest of the kids were too tired or too listless to do so for themselves. Steve quickly found himself holding out for the afternoons when Bucky would arrive because Bucky…

He swept through the wards in a whirlwind of his characteristic brightness, all smiles and laughter when there was before him nothing but sombre expressions and creased brows.

He gave performances and threw dancing jigs entirely by himself for the amusement of the kids on the ward, and Steve wasn't the only one to profess with utter sincerity that Bucky was actually _good_ at dancing.

He charmed the parents, coaxed the nurses into allowing the ward kids to play just a little bit as they weren't really supposed to, and should a doctor be on hand at the time of his arrival he almost always addressed them by name and with familiarity. People liked Bucky. It was as simple as that.

And Bucky liked Steve. That much Steve came to realise within the first week of his stay. Bucky actually liked him, and though Michael was hanging off him as often as not, though Jenny seemed to think Bucky was the best thing in the world and Dai had a habit of telling tales of their games in Bucky's absence that was just short of annoying, it was Steve that Bucky seemed to spend the most time with. He made Steve feel special even though most likely because:

"You're seven years old? Really? I just turned eight, so you're nearly as old as me!"

That discovery seemed to delight Bucky, and from that moment, from the afternoon that he'd first told Steve they would be friends, he'd proceeded to prove he would be just that to him.

The chemotherapy that had become a part of Steve's life, a word not so foreign and draped in negative connotations, was made a little more bearable when Bucky appeared in the ward the afternoon afterwards with noise and laughter. He was a burst of reality and something other than Sick.

The days when Steve found he couldn't swallow a mouthful without throwing it back up were eased just a little when Bucky would appear at his bedside with a sack – and actual sack – of different flavoured sugar-free, hard-boiled candies because, "You can't eat, maybe, but it still tastes good, right?"

The did. They tasted really good.

And the days when Steve's mom couldn't visit until after work, when Steve felt particularly down or when he couldn't haul himself from his bed, Bucky was there. Whether it was in his loud chattering to another kid or when he clambered onto the end of Steve's bed to show him the origami crane he'd made at school, or to reveal an arm dotted with stickers he'd stolen from his teacher's desk, it helped Steve. It helped him more than he could say.

Just like the first time Steve crumpled, utterly broke, and his mom wasn't there. His mom wasn't, but Bucky was.

He didn't know why it was worse that day. Why the fact that he threw up into the bucket dutifully provided by the nurses felt more horrible, or the soothing pats and gentle murmurs of those same nurses more stinging then comforting. He didn't tell himself to start crying, just like he didn't let himself dissolve into uncontrollable sobs that shook his entire body and hurt in a way that was more than just physical. Steve _hurt_.

Bucky had never had much of a filter for personal space. Maybe it was because, tagging along to his mother's work every afternoon, he spent so much time with almost-strangers that the boundary between 'familiar' and 'stranger' had faded for him. Maybe it was because his own mother was so physical with him, whether it was in a not-quite cuff to the side of his head or a tight squeeze when he passed her in the hall. Or maybe it was just Bucky himself – that he was such an affectionate person, had so much of that affection to share, that he couldn't help himself.

For whatever reason, Steve was grateful. The hands of the nurses as they stroked his hair from his face, as they wiped tears from his cheeks and even attempted to wrap an arm around his shoulders didn't help. Steve didn't mean to thrust them away from him, but that was what he found his arms doing.

Until Bucky arrived.

Steve only distantly heard his worried querying, "What's going on?" He didn't see him slip through the ring of nurses on hand, barely felt the slight dip in his bed as weight sagged upon the thin mattress. He did feel when Bucky curled around him, though, and even if he couldn't see him through his hysteria, through the blur of his tears, Steve knew it was him.

He didn't push him away. Bucky was a warm, comforting weight blanketing him in a way that the nurses couldn't emulate. _So_ warm, _so_ comforting, that it was almost as good as it was with Steve's mom. Or, more correctly, a different good. Steve found himself clutching at Bucky and hiccupping and coughing and sobbing into his shoulder because it _hurt_. He _hurt_ and he was _sad_ and –

And Bucky made it better. He was bigger than Steve because, "Of course I'm bigger, I'm older and you're just little," and though Bucky's mother always called him a bit of a beanpole and the Nurse Valda always slipped him treats because he was 'a skinny little toothpick', Bucky was strong. His arms squeezed Steve tightly, just as tightly as Steve's mom would have and just for a little while…

Just for a little while, Bucky made Steve better.

Steve wasn't sad to leave the hospital. The day his doctor told him he'd gone into remission was the most wonderful he could remember. It meant not being sick anymore. It meant he could sleep in his own bed that he hadn't seen in _months_. It meant that he could go to school again soon, that he could play properly without fear of reprimand from nurses for overexerting himself. Most importantly, however, it made Steve's mom smile. Really smile, as she hadn't in what felt like so, so long. She looked worn, exhausted, and her skin was nearly as pale as Steve's had become, but she smiled. That was the best thing in the world to Steve.

It was wonderful, except for the part when Steve left Bucky. The other kids – some of them still there from when Steve had arrived, some of them new and replacing those that had left – he would likely miss too. Michael was a constant source of chirping brightness and had taken to parroting Steve's words almost as much as he did Bucky's. Amelie, the girl in the bed across from Steve, had always been kind enough to lend him books and even help him with words he found too difficult to deduce himself. The girl in the next bed over, too, the one who had arrived three weeks after Steve – he would miss her too in a way, though Chelsea hadn't spoken to him all that much. Her mother was very kind and always greeted him.

But it was Bucky he'd miss the most. On the afternoon that Steve was set to sign out, he wrapped Bucky in a hug that strove to be as tight as those Bucky had bestowed upon him with increasing frequency since they'd first officially become friends. Bucky squeezed him back even tighter.

"I'll miss you, Stevie," he said, using the pet name that no one but Steve's mom ever used for him. He'd picked it up all on his own. "You're my best friend here, you know."

Steve hadn't known that, even if he'd hoped for it. Bucky was the kind of boy who naturally attracted others to him, made them want him to like them, to think them as wonderful as they thought him. Steve had been far from immune to such charms himself. He liked Bucky, liked him a lot, and even when he considered his school friends – of which several had come to visit him in his hospital admission – none were quite so special as Bucky. Bucky had helped Steve, but more than that, he was _special_.

"Me too," Steve mumbled into Bucky's shoulder. Bucky really was taller than him, but then Steve was more than aware he was small. Skinny, too. Fragile, even, though he didn't like to consider himself such. It had annoyed him at first because his father had been tall, his mom always said, and Steve should rightly be too. But it wasn't so bad when Bucky had laughed it off for him. "It's alright, Stevie. When you get better you'll grow really tall. You'll see."

It seemed like Bucky was always saying things to make Steve feel better. Always.

"I'll come back," Steve said. "Maybe I can come back and visit you?"

Steve didn't want to come back to the hospital, not even for the check-ups that his mom had said would come on a frequent basis before tapering off. But if it was to see Bucky…

Bucky jostled him slightly in his embrace. "If you want," he said. "But it's okay if you don't. Lots of people never come back to visit."

Steve remembered leaving after that. He always would – of walking backwards from the doors of the ward, his hand wrapped in his mom's. Of the bright wave Bucky spared him, a wave that continued until he disappeared from view. When Steve reflected of their friendship, their first months knowing one another, it was that image he would always recall. Just as he recalled his mom's words as he left.

"You'll miss him," she said, more of a statement than a question. "He's been a good friend to you."

Steve only nodded, finally turning from looking over his shoulder. It was a good thing, a _great_ thing, to be leaving, but he still felt somehow sad. Just a little bit.

"Don't look so solemn, Stevie," his mom said, as always reading him like an open book. "We can come and see Bucky again. But this is a new chance for us, alright? An open door."

"An open door," Steve echoed, nodding without really understanding.

His mom nodded as she glanced down at him, her smile as unshakeable as it had been that entire afternoon. "Sometimes we get given a second chance, Steve. I think it's our job to make a good one of it, don't you?"

At the time, Steve hadn't truly understand what his mom meant. He didn't fully understand chances, or just how close he'd come to not walking out of those hospital doors. But he was left with an impression. _Make a good one_ , his mom had said. A good one.

Steve would do his utmost to be Good.

And things were good after that. Steve wasn't 'better' immediately, but he was improving. He went back to school. He slept in his own bed. He spent his evenings when his mom returned from work curled into her side and reading their books together. It was almost as though the incident, his bout in the hospital, hadn't been at all. If it wasn't for the memories, few good and many sorely bad, memories of a friend that had become more to Steve in those months of in-patient care than any before, Steve might have thought it a dream. A long, horrible dream that he'd somehow managed to claw his way from.

But Steve couldn't forget. He couldn't forget any of it, but especially Bucky.

He did return to the hospital. He did see his friend again, and each meeting was a flurry of joy and excitement, of spontaneous hugs and bright, bright smiles. Steve saw Bucky when he visited his doctor, when he begged his mom for a moment or two to visit the ward that sent a chill down his spine as he stepped within its halls but he hastened into nonetheless.

"Stevie! I knew you'd come back to visit!" or –

"You look kind of funny dressed in a school uniform. What school is that? That's _heaps_ far away from mine," or –

"Come on, you have to come up and dance with me now. You're not a sick 'un anymore so you've got to."

Always bright. Always happy; that was Bucky. It wasn't often that Steve could see him, at first barely once a week and then less and less frequently, but every time it was with regret when Steve left the ward. He didn't like the hospital, and he doubted he'd ever feel comfortable within its walls without thinking of – _gut-churning nausea, faintly illuminated nights with the sound of constant beeping, nurses bustling and the trundle of a trolley down the hall_ – but Steve returned. Time and time again.

Until he started to… not.

The doctor visits became less and less frequent, at hours when Bucky wasn't yet returned from school. The occasions that Steve took himself down to the paediatric ward were even less so. By the time two years had passed, Steve didn't see Bucky anymore. He still had his memories – of a hospital, of a friend – but he didn't get the chance to see him. Not anymore.

There was regret in that, but Steve had a life. He had his second chance, just as his mom had said. He would do Good, and he _did_ good. He might not be the fastest runner or the best at school, but he tried his damn hardest. And things were going well. They were. Even when his mom spoke of inflation with a weary strain to her voice, when she started to work a little later into the night as Steve got older, "Just to cover the bills and work to pay off that damn loan, Stevie," things weren't bad. Not really.

Until they were. As many things do, everything struck at once.

Steve was twelve. He was twelve and just starting middle school. It was a chance, an open door, and though it wasn't the best of high schools he still vowed to do his best. And he would do just that except…

He started to get sick again. Sick in a way that was all too familiar.

His mom started to panic.

He went back to his doctor and there were tests. Bloods, scans, days of waiting, and then…

"Relapse," the doctor said with a sigh. He looked older, sounded older, than Steve remembered him being the first time he'd seen him. "It happens sometimes, and more often than we'd like but…"

Steve got sicker.

His mom panicked more.

There were bills to pay and a loan hanging over their heads, and the other doctor's bills that hadn't even been repaid from years before. At twelve years old, Steve knew he wasn't a worldly person. He knew enough of the world to understand that he knew very little of it at all. But he knew that his mom struggled with finances. He understood that the cost of readmission into hospital was too great for her, even if she steeled herself and simply said, "We'll manage if we have to."

Steve wasn't blind. Not to his mom, to their situation, or to himself. He understood when she picked up more work, too many hours for one person to manage. He understood what those unopened envelopes in the letterbox meant, the way his mom's expression would tighten just slightly when they arrived before she stuffed them out of sight. He understood…

He understood when he started to get sicker and sicker, and Steve did his utmost to hide it. He wasn't _that_ sick. Some days were worse than others, but he wasn't _that_ sick, he would tell his mom. He could manage as he was a little longer, could hold of from his doctor's visits, with his resistance to hospital at all, despite his doctor's open concern and pointed frown. "I'm okay, Mom," Steve would say when she sat alongside him at the dinner table. He would force himself to take another bite of the simple meal that his throat, his tongue, the roiling in his belly, demanded he resist. "I'm really alright."

Steve didn't think he'd have to go back into hospital. No – he wouldn't _let_ himself, because his mom couldn't afford it. She was alone, a proud woman who had never called upon the favours of family abroad or that of her deceased husband that lived closer to home. Steve wouldn't ask her to give more than she could even on the days where it was next to impossible for him to climb from his bed.

He didn't realise she'd already given too much.

The coughing started in a way that made it seem like it had always been there. Steve only really noticed when, an evening in the midst of one of their mutual reading sessions, his mom had to pause and then scramble from the couch towards the bathroom as she hacked in violent shakes. That was the moment that Steve really understood that something was very wrong.

* * *

 

_"Mom?" he called, straightening in his seat where he'd all but fallen from the cushions at his mom's hasty retreat. The living room was dark but for the flickering yellow standing lamp alongside the couch, emphasising shadows and only faintly the path to the bathroom. The bathroom door stood open, the feeble whiteness of dull tiles reflecting the equally feeble bathroom light._

_Coughs and splutters echoed jarringly._

_Steve clutched his book to his chest. It was a hard book, one he would struggle through had his mom not sat beside him as his personal dictionary and deciphered the more difficult words that he'd never heard before. A classic, his mom had called it, by a woman named Jane Austen who was a world phenomenon in literature. Steve didn't think he had quite the appreciation for the novel that his mom did, but he read it anyway. She seemed happy, proud even, that he did._

_Steve clutched that book so tightly that the pages crinkled in his grasp. "Mom?"_

_There was a gasp from the bathroom, and then the coughing stopped. Those gasps ensued, but they gradually slowed. Steve stared through the darkness towards the distant light, and he didn't even blink. Not until his mom reappeared in the living room doorway._

_There wasn't really enough light to see by, but in that moment Steve saw. He saw in a way that he hadn't seen before, in a way that, as the seasons gradually changed without notice, he'd simply accepted that change. He was twelve, could understand such things at least in part, and the empathy of similar ailments made what he did recognise that much more apparent._

_When his mom stepped from the bathroom, Steve saw. His mom was thin. She'd always been slim, but her frailty went beyond simply thin. Her loose clothes seemed a size or two too big for her, and the darkness of jeans and jumper made her pale skin even more so. Her hair was pulled absently back from her face, but the tendrils that had sprung loose hung limp and lank around her gaunt face. She looked tired, and though tiredness was the state that Steve had always known her to be deeply entrenched in, it was more apparent at that moment. More real._

_As she leant heavily against the doorframe as though it was the only thing keeping her on her feet, she smiled at him feebly. Even from a distance, even through the darkness, Steve could see the chapping of her lips that he'd overlooked before that moment, the smudges beneath her eyes that were even more pronounced than usual. Or than they had been, at least, for usual had become deeply shadowed. She was tired, wavering, visibly worn and…_

_"Mom," Steve asked, and he heard his voice waver slightly. He was twelve and shouldn't be expressing such childish fears, but with his mom it had always been different. "Are you sick?"_

_His mom didn't reply immediately, and that was all the answer Steve really needed. But she did struggle to widen her smile, and through it was thin it was_ her _smile. Despite the fallacy Steve knew it spoke, he was comforted by that smile. "I'm alright, Stevie," she said, and crossed the room back to his side. She sunk onto the couch cushion next to him and slung her arm back around his shoulders. "It's just a little bit of a cough."_

_Steve didn't believe her. Not really. He knew the difference between sick and Sick because he'd lived with both kinds for years. Steve had never been one to question his mom, to speak out of turn, because he was a good kid, just like his mom told him to be. In recent years, however, he'd grown to understand there were different types of good; one of those types meant asking even when the question seemed already answered._

_"Do you need to see a doctor?" Steve asked. "Can we maybe ask my doctor when I go and see him on Wednesday?"_

_His mom leant her forehead against the side of his temple. Her arm squeezed more tightly around him as she sighed upon his cheek in a soft puff. There was much spoken in that sigh and Steve wasn't sure he heard the half of it. When his mom finally really spoke, it was in a reply more upbeat that perhaps necessary. "I'm fine, sweetheart. It's just a little cough. But let's not worry about this. I'm far more interested in hearing about the exploits of our Elinor and Marianne, aren't you?"_

_Steve wasn't. He wasn't at all. But, obligingly, because he was a good kid and his mom asked him to do so even without words, he turned back to the book._

* * *

 

His mom wasn't okay. Neither was Steve, but he had a doctor. His mom wasn't okay but she didn't even have that. She was sick but she still worked. She was exhausted but she barely spared a second to sleep.

Really, if anyone were to consider her situation in an entirely objective, clinical light, it would have been no surprise that she died.

It was to Steve. Not that his mom had deteriorated but that such deterioration passed over the threshold from 'very bad' to 'impossible, inconceivable, horrendously cataclysmic'. Steve had been sick, had the detached understanding that death hung over his own head for years, but it had always been a notion. Always just a possibility that wouldn't ever be fulfilled. Steve didn't really understand.

Not until his mom left him.

Not until social services arrived on his door, when the doctor left after pronouncing her 'gone' and the officers took his place with formal words riddled with legal terms and pomp that Steve hardly heard.

Not until his mom's funeral when he stared at the little urn that was all that was left of her. An urn, simple and stuffed with ashes that shouldn't have once been a person yet somehow was. It was… impossible. Horrendous. Cataclysmic. And Steve could only stare.

He was still staring as the simple, government-funded funeral took place and the smattering of attendants who knew Sarah Rogers left. Steve stared until those attendants stopped pausing at his side to offer a word of commiseration, of sympathy and compassion. He simply sat, exhausted as he always was, sick on a different level to how he always was, and stared at the dull little urn.

Flowers flooded the front of the community hall. Not a church but simply a hall, and that stung slightly because though they hadn't been particularly devout, he and his mom had attended every Sunday. Lilies and carnations spread through that not-church, though Steve hadn't known what they were when he first saw them. "The carnations are beautiful," one woman had said behind him. "Such a lovely pink."

As though the colour of the flowers even mattered.

Steve sat alone in his exhaustion, in his stupefied misery, for a long time. The pastor who had conducted the ceremony, who'd spoken barely a handful of words, said something to him as he passed but Steve didn't hear him. He didn't even notice when the distant, humming music that had been playing throughout like a mournful theme tune cut out. Not until the weight of a presence seated itself at his side. On one side and then the other.

Steve glanced to his right. Then to his left. He hadn't cried throughout the service and he didn't cry when he took in the sight of the vaguely familiar presences seated next to him. Distant, almost-forgotten memories. People that he knew by name as –

"Hello, Steve," the woman said. Her smile was sad, regretful, and her eyes were reddened with the aftermath of tears. But she still smiled. Steve didn't know how she managed that. "You might not remember me. I'm your aunt, Anna."

Anna was his father's sister. He hadn't seen her in so long that she was more of a mostly forgotten dream than a memory. And yet there she was, appeared out of the blue, returned from a trip to Germany that had become an extended stay and then a lifestyle when she'd met her husband there some ten years ago. She and Steve's mom had never been particularly close, but…

That didn't matter. Apparently that didn't matter when it came to family. It didn't change the fact that, when Anna nee Rogers' nephew had no one else to turn to, she offered herself. She hadn't known, she later confessed, that Steve had even been so sick.

"Your mom and I, we were never… we didn't talk much." There was genuine regret to her words when she admitted such a distance.

Despite the thinly veiled awkwardness between them, however, the distance she had from Steve's mom, when Steve needed family Anna rose to the play. She offered herself as a guardian before anyone had even expressly asked. Steve didn't have a say in the matter but he wouldn't have said anything even if he had been permitted an opinion. When it came to his aunt Anna, to his uncle Abraham, there was no complaint he could have.

Besides, Steve was tired.

He was sick.

He was done with fighting, because his mom… Steve didn't much know what he was supposed to do without his mom. It seemed pointless to keep trying. Pointless to try to get better.

That was until Anna. Until uncle Abraham especially, who was a doctor in his own right. The pair of them blew into Steve's life and, despite his listlessness, his carelessness for the fight in his mom's absence, they dragged him through it. In little enough time, barely days after Steve's guardianship had been officially declared, hospital was a certainty once more.

It was Steve's uncle, Doctor Abraham Erskine, that pushed it. He was the one that announced it, the one who declared it 'must happen'.

Abraham was a quiet man. Older than Steve's aunt, older than his mom had been, and noticeably so for the grey peppering his hair and beard, he had a gentleness about him that was only enhanced by the lines criss-crossing his brow, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the way his mouth seemed to simply settle into a comfortable almost-smile. That almost-smile was the expression Abraham always turned upon Steve; when Steve knew him only as his aunt's husband, then as the man who would be caring for him, then as the kindly uncle that he grew to become startlingly quickly, it was always his almost-smile.

Steve liked Abraham. Or he would have liked him if he had the headspace to _like_ someone. After his mom died, the very notion of 'liking' became a foreign concept. Steve had never had very many friends at school, but those he did affiliate with were all but forgotten. When Anna, when _Abraham_ , told him he needed to return to hospital, that he couldn't not, Steve didn't tell any of his would-be friends and it wasn't because of his reluctance. He didn't want to return to walls of pristine whiteness and fluorescent lights, the constant smell of sterility and the bustling nurses that were kind but always somehow clinically distant at the same time.

Steve just didn't need to tell them. It was as simple as that.

Reluctance was only a passing consideration, however, because in Anna's loudly concerned way, in Abraham's quietly insistent one, it became a necessity.

"Steve, goodness, I don't even know how we've managed to delay it for so long," his aunt said, hands fluttering before her as she patted first Steve's shoulder, then his cheek, then stroked down his hair in a way Steve's mom never had. "But you need to go, dear. I'm sorry, I know it will be hard, but you need to go."

"With hope, it will be for only a short time, Steven," his uncle Abraham added, the thick lather of his accent morphing his words slightly. "I have friends. Some of my American contacts I believe still reside in New York City. If I can resume communication with them, we may be able to hasten things along."

Steve didn't care. He was reluctant but somehow he didn't really care at the same time. He would return to hospital because he was unwell, because some days he couldn't drag himself from bed and because his aunt keened over how thin he was, how pale, and his uncle quietly worried that the virus he apparently hadn't overcome when he was seven would leave a permanent scar upon him if he lived to see the other side.

Abraham said as much. To Steve, he said that he was worried he would die, and he spoke in a way that was somehow more comforting than horrifying. It was something that Steve appreciated about his uncle. It was one of the things that made him like him on the days he felt that he could maybe like just a little bit.

Steve had only one request, and he was speaking it before he even knew why he asked. "Can I go back to the same hospital I was at before?"

Anna was slightly confused. Abraham cocked his head curiously. Why was he so specific? Would it matter, so long as he got the proper treatment? The question was apparent in both of their expressions, but neither disputed Steve's request.

"We'll contact your doctor to see what we can manage," Anna said.

"I will speak to my colleagues and learn if they are affiliated with your hospital," Abraham added.

So Steve went back. It wasn't until he returned, until he was within the walls of the paediatric ward once more – the same ward yet somehow slightly different, slightly smaller than it had been – that Steve even realised why he'd asked. Why, on a level that was deeper than the detached disinterest he felt for everything since his mom had died, he needed it.

* * *

 

 _Some of the nurses were familiar. Not all of them, but some. Steve recognised Margery, the elderly woman who he'd thought was_ so old _in his first in-patient term. Reece, who he similarly realised was far younger than Steve had first assumed and couldn't even be thirty. And Winnie, Bucky's mother. She looked exactly the same as she had three years ago, the last time Steve had made his sparse trips to the ward to see his friend._

_They remembered him. Or maybe they pretended to, but if they did they made a good show of pretending. Steve certainly believed it._

_He was provided with his own room this time. A courtesy of Abraham's connections, it was, though the way Steve's uncle said it made it seem as though he was affectionately gifted a favour rather than pompously handed a privilege. The room wasn't very big, only a little larger than the station that Steve had on his previous admission, but it had privacy. Four walls, an actual door that could close if not lock. A couple of seats, too, and they had cushions a little more padded than the ones that sat at the bedsides of those in the open rooms._

_It was a favour, Abraham said, not a privilege, but it still felt like one. It wasn't made any less so for the fact that a handful of other children were similarly provided with their own space._

_Anna and Abraham sat alongside Steve for a time. Then a doctor arrived, sticking his head into the room and greeting Abraham with a crinkling smile of familiarity and Steve's uncle hastened from the room with a murmured, "I won't be a moment." Then Anna huffed a weary sigh in her seat and leant back in her seat slightly, sagging. Steve couldn't blame her; the day of his admission had been a long one._

_"You don't have to stick around, " Steve said, because regardless of the fact he'd stayed with his aunt and uncle for a week already, he was wasn't comfortable in their company. And he wouldn't be – not yet, anyway. "If you want to leave, you don't have to stay."_

_"Oh, we're not leaving," Anna said, and though she still sagged in her seat, she offered Steve a warm, tired smile. "You're not getting rid of us that easily."_

_Anna was a smiley person, Steve had realised in the short time he'd known her. Not smiley in the way his mom was, had been, with her secret affection and the slight curl of her lips. Anna smiled like she didn't care who saw. She wasn't a large person, a little plump perhaps and short, but the tall mess of her blonde curls, her round face and blue eyes, made her impossible to overlook. Steve supposed he knew where he'd gotten his colouring from; his mom always was, had been, darker than he._

_"I don't mean I want to get rid of you," Steve muttered, dropping his gaze to his lap ashamedly. "I just thought… you've been here all day and…"_

_Anna's hand fell on top of his head, just as it had numerous times since Steve had first met her. She had a strange habits of doing so, one that didn't seem deterred for the fact that she was barely taller than he. "I think we'll stick around if it's all the same to you," she said, patting gently. Then her hand dropped. "Although, I am feeling somewhat peckish. How about you, Steve? I think we missed afternoon tea with the mess around coming in. Shall I duck down to the cafeteria and see what I can rustle us up?"_

_Steve wasn't hungry. He rarely grew hungry when he was ill, and he'd been ill for what felt like so long that he almost couldn't remember what hunger felt like. But he only shrugged, nodded, and Anna smiled her wide, noticeable smile before rising to her feet. With a mimic of Abraham's "I won't be a moment," she was slipping from the room and disappearing into the pristine white hallway beyond._

_Steve watched her leave. Then he slumped back into his pillow with a sigh, gaze drawing towards the ceiling. It was patterned with a distractingly boring smattering of uneven lines, and Steve found his gaze drifting along those lines, aimless, thoughtless, half-asleep. Until he heard a sound at his door._

_It wasn't Anna returning. It wasn't Abraham either. For a moment, Steve didn't recognise the boy who leant casually against his doorframe. More than how he looked, it was how he held himself that was so different to Steve's memory of him._

_Bucky had changed. He'd grown, just as Steve had. Taller, lengthening, he'd lost a good portion of the loveable puppy fat that Steve had always associated with him. The round cheeks with their near-constant flush had thinned to angles that foretold further sharpening with age. He was still long-limbed, still breathed the confidence and comfort in his own body that he had when Steve had first seen him five years before – except it was a different confidence this time. Not quite so carefree, nor so happy. That much Steve could discern from a glance._

_More than that, however, Steve realised that Bucky was eye-catching in the sort of way that was similarly different to how he'd been. He'd always been a 'pretty little boy' as the nurses had said, spoken in almost exactly the same tone that Steve's mom had always said it to him, but it was different now. Steve noticed. Bucky was the kind of attractive that crept towards handsome, the kind that would be just beginning to turn the heads of girls his age had he attended Steve's school._

_Steve had never quite realised that about Bucky before, but it struck him then. It was in the sharpness of his features, his dark eyes and the scruff of carelessly combed hair. It was in the way he leant against the doorframe like he owned the room and the hall beyond, like he was exactly where he should be and no one would even think to tell him to move. That was different, too._

_But most importantly, the most important change: Bucky wasn't smiling. There wasn't even the trace of a smile upon his lips. That more than anything seemed wrong. Even more wrong when, after a long pause of mutual staring, Bucky's lips quirked slightly into something that was more of a smirk than a grin._

_"And so the prodigal son returns," he said, his tone as sardonic as his smirk._

_Steve stared at him blankly. He knew what prodigal meant because his mom had explained it to him, and he didn't think himself particularly wasteful or extravagant. Just as he knew the tale of the prodigal son, too, the biblical reference that shouldn't have come from the mouth of someone who Steve knew from Bucky's own words. "Church?" he'd said once, what seemed so long ago. "Hell no, I don't go to church." Steve didn't think he was really anything like 'prodigal'._

_He stared for so long that eventually Bucky sighed, smirk sliding into disappearance. "Fuck, it was just a joke. Don't look so shocked. Or is it that you don't remember me or something?"_

_The cuss struck Steve first. In his house, both that of his mom and of his aunt and uncle, they didn't cuss. Kids at school did sometimes, but they'd only really begun to do so in recent years. Hearing it struck Steve like a discordant chord._

_A heartbeat after that, however, was the greater wrongness. That Bucky thought he didn't remember him. The thought was so wrong, so inconceivable, that Steve found himself shaking his head before he even realised it._

_"Of course I remember you, Bucky," he said, pushing himself up off his pillows. Steve was tired, always tired, but that tiredness seemed secondary in importance to Bucky's presence. Bucky was his friend, had been such an important friend, and –_

_Why had Steve stopped seeing him? He couldn't even remember._

_"That's nice," Bucky said in a way that made him seem anything but interested in the fact. His shoulders did lessen from some of the tension that Steve hadn't even realised he held until it left him. "Good to know that I leave a bit of an impression."_

_"You really thought I'd forget you?" Steve asked, and he was swinging his legs over the side of the bed in a second. To rise? Steve wasn't sure if he was up to that, but he twisted to face Bucky properly nonetheless. "How could you think that?"_

_Gaze lowered, Bucky plucked at the hem of his shirt. His school shirt, Steve saw. Untucked and slightly discoloured from the white it had once been, it clearly bore the evidence of hard wear._ That _was like Bucky, Steve registered with something like relief. Bucky had never had much care for such trivialities. It made the awkward space between them… not less, but less unbearable._

_Unbearable. It shouldn't be like that. It shouldn't be like that at all._

_"Yeah, well, you wouldn't be the first," Bucky said. "Most kids when they leave here don't exactly want to come back."_

_"You always do," Steve said, thrusting aside the urge to leap upon the words and profess how anyone could possibly think that not coming back to see Bucky was a good idea. Why hadn't he come back again? Why? "You still hang out here after school?"_

_"Only always," Bucky replied, shrugging a shoulder. He still didn't look up and the awkwardness was still there, but at least he wasn't smirking anymore. It hadn't been a nice expression, not on the Bucky that Steve knew. Had known. "Would you think I'm crazy if I said I actually don't mind it here? It's easier to come here than go home after school."_

_"Is your house that far away?"_

_"Not really."_

_There was something there. Something that Steve didn't understand embedded in that monosyllabic reply. He couldn't quite work out what it was, though. He couldn't quite…_

_Bucky's gaze rose, even if his chin stayed dropped. Any thoughts on the subject dissipated in Steve's mind, distracted by that contemplative narrowing of Bucky's eyes. "You got sick again, huh," he said, more of a statement than a question._

_"Is it that obvious?" Steve said, fighting the urge to wipe a hand beneath his eyes. The dark smudges beneath them had always bothered him when he saw his reflection._

_"Kind of, yeah."_

_"Well gee, thanks."_

_"I'm just saying. That's shit."_

_"It really is." Steve was caught for a second on the cuss again. It sounded far too natural coming from Bucky's mouth._

_There was another pause, then, "Guess I'll be seeing you 'round a bit."_

_Bucky's tone was casual, almost nonchalant, but Steve leaped upon it with both hands grasping. He nodded fervently. "Yeah. I'd like that. So long as you're still… if you still come to…?"_

_"I said I come, didn't I?" Bucky said with a slightly exasperated sigh. "Is deafness a part of your thing now?"_

_"I'm not deaf."_

_"Forgetfulness, then."_

_Steve shrugged. Another silence fell, longer this time, and Steve found himself fiddling with the blankets on either side of him just as Bucky's fingers continued their idle plucking of his hem. When had things become so awkward? Why? Was it because… because Steve had…?_

_The thought was horrible to consider. For all of Steve's resignation, his disregard of anything and everything – because when his mom was gone, what was the point? – he hated that. He hated the fact that he'd stopped coming to see Bucky, and that his friend was different, had changed in that time to a person who still looked a bit the same but wasn't. He wasn't as bright as Bucky had been. The room still seemed to turn its attention towards him, and Steve alongside it, but Bucky wasn't_ bright. _He wasn't smiling at Steve like he used to._

_Abruptly, Steve found such a thought terrible. Words spilled from his mouth before he could suppress them. "I'm sorry I didn't visit. More."_

_Bucky's fingers stilled. He stared at Steve, blinking slowly and expression stilled. Unreadable. That was different, too. Bucky had always worn his heart on his sleeve. What had_ happened _?_

_Then Bucky shrugged, disregarding. "Don't sweat it. I told you, most people don't."_

_"I should have."_

_"You didn't have to."_

_"I know, but I wish I had."_

_"Most people like to leave hospital and everyone inside it behind them," Bucky said, and there was a slight edge to his words. Not harsh but… something._

_Steve swallowed. The thought of leaving Bucky behind – surely Steve hadn't been the only one? They'd been close, and Steve had liked to pretend that he was Bucky's best friend as Bucky was his, but hindsight made reality more apparent in some lights. There had been other kids, before and since. Surely… "Not even Michael came to visit after he left? He always thought you were the best thing."_

_If possible, Bucky's face grew only blanker. Steve was staring, fighting to unearth the meaning of that, when, "Michael died."_

_Two words._

_Two words that hung suspended in the air, cold and emotionless._

_Steve stared, but for a different reason this time. Death had been a constant and hated companion of his thoughts in recent weeks, but it still struck him to consider it approaching from a new direction. It still… it still…_

_Hurt. That Michael, the chirping parrot of a little boy who had hung off Bucky's back and shoulders and trailed his steps at every opportunity, could possibly be dead. It hurt._

_"Sorry," was all Steve could think to say._

_Bucky shrugged, and though there was a complete absence of tension in the gesture, that absence only seemed to emphasise the feelings it masked. "It was a while ago. About two years now, I think."_

_Steve pressed his lips together. He wished he hadn't spoken. "I'm really sorry, Bucky."_

_Another shrug. "Not much to be done about it." And another pause fell, long and only emphasising the ensuing awkwardness between them. It lasted until Bucky broke it this time. "But whatever. It happens all the time, you know. People are sick who come here. What about you? Where's you mom, by the way? I didn't see her."_

_Steve blinked. In an instant, thoughts swung from Michael – poor, gone,_ dead _– and back to where they'd rested for days on end. Steve's mouth spoke without his consent. "Mom died."_

_And silence._

_Two words, and silence._

_It was a different kind of pause this time. Different, because Steve felt different. Because Bucky seemed different. An extended pause of breathless silence. Then, in a slow, fluid motion somehow reminiscent of how he'd been in his younger years, Bucky straightened from his lean against the doorframe and took half a step inside the room. His expression was still unreadable to Steve, but in a different way this time. His eyes tightened slightly, lips parted just a little._

_And then he was across the room. He was climbing onto the bed next to Steve. He was rising onto his knees and then he was wrapping both arms around Steve's neck in a way that was at once familiar for their shared past and yet different for the time between them._

_"I'm sorry, Stevie," he said, and the use of that name as much as anything threw Steve back into the years behind them. "I'm really, really sorry."_

_Steve's listlessness broke at that. Listlessness, uncaring, a detached feeling that wasn't so much a feeling as a lack of it. It shattered when Bucky squeezed him in an unfamiliar yet achingly_ the same _embrace as he had when Steve was younger. Bucky splintered it and then he replaced Steve's pieces in a way that fit properly._

_Steve hadn't cried – really cried – for his mom's death until that point. There was no one that he could cry to, not even his aunt or uncle. But Bucky… Bucky was different. He'd always been different, and even changed as he was from the boy Steve remembered, the fact that he was important never would. As he hadn't been able to with anyone else, when Bucky held him and squeezed him, Steve sobbed in a release of everything that he'd held festering within himself for weeks. Like a breeched dam it flooded free and tore from him, leaving a trail of sodden mess in its wake._

* * *

 

Hospital wasn't a nice place to be. It was cold, something that Steve remembered from his first admission. It was stark, with white walls only occasionally broken by the overloud vibrancy that splattered across several of the rooms in the paediatric ward. The floors were hard and unforgiving, even those muffled by carpet, and it didn't matter if Steve wore socks. They were a feeble protection.

The food wasn't great. It was standard, and then nauseating when Steve started with his chemo again. He grew heartily sick of the buckets, of the little bags he carried with him should he feel the sudden and irrepressible urge to hurl when out of reach of a bathroom.

The nurses were always kind, the teachers that urged Steve to attempt his homework encouraging and supportive, but they were professionals. That fact didn't really change even when an arm was curled around his shoulders in silent support or a smile bestowed. Just professional. Steve knew that.

He didn't like seeing the doctors, because even if they did speak to him kindly, even if they were Uncle Abraham's friends, they were still doctors. It wasn't fair, perhaps, to pin the blame for how Steve felt upon them, but he couldn't help it. They were the ones that ordered the chemo, weren't they?

And yet just as it had been the first time, Steve's time at hospital wasn't all darkness. It wasn't all struggle, hardship, and fitful sleep broken by pains that dragged him into exhausted wakefulness. And just as it had been the first time, Bucky was the reason it wasn't.

Bucky was different. Just as Steve had noticed at his first time seeing him again, Bucky had changed. He didn't smile as much, and he didn't conduct dance concerts in the middle of the paediatric ward. He didn't fly around crazily, wreaking havoc and 'disrupting the kids who are trying to sleep' as Steve had heard Winnie Barnes scold him for doing countless times in their younger years. Steve didn't think it was just because he was older that he didn't, either.

Bucky acted differently, too. A strange kind of carelessness, almost aloofness, seemed to settle upon him at times, and it was at those times that his smirk arose in place of a smile. Steve didn't like those times. It felt like _his_ Bucky was just a little further away when they arose. Those times, Bucky didn't really speak to the other kids except sarcastically. He would complain about homework, that he shouldn't have to come straight from school to the hospital school room and do more work with them, to which the educational instructor would tell him that, "You could just take yourself home if you have a problem, Bucky."

Bucky scowled at that. It wasn't an indignant scowl as it once might have been but something else. Something almost angry. Dark, even. Steve didn't like it when that happened either.

And yet, despite his changes, it was Bucky who stood as Steve's crutch. It was Bucky as often as Anna or Abraham who sat alongside Steve on the days that he couldn't drag himself from bed, feet kicked up onto Steve's mattress or leg hooked over the arm of the chair and simply silently sitting. Sometimes, Steve thought that Bucky was more prone to inducing their mutual moments of silence than Steve's necessity did.

It was always with Bucky that Steve wandered about the ward. They talked more than played now, because they weren't little kids anymore as much as because Steve was always tired. Steve thrived off that talk, and for more than that, with each passing day, despite his illness he felt more alive than he had since his mom died. They spoke of everything, and Steve grew to understand Bucky. That he was popular at school, though he never said so. That he was good at baseball, though he never said it like that either. That he was smart, even if it didn't reflect in his grades because apparently his teacher thought he had 'listening problems'.

Steve learned that Bucky lived on the outskirts of Brooklyn, yet at the complete opposite end to where Steve did. He learned that he had his own room after his younger sister had complained about sharing, and that it might have been smaller than his sister's but it was better because, "Mine has an escape ladder outside the window, which is kind of fantastic, don't you think?" Bucky never really talked about his father, but he complained about his mother enough to more than make up for the absence of other familial references.

"She's always nagging me," he would say. "It's so _annoying_." And then he'd turn like a lodestone in the direction of his mother across the ward and pout accusingly.

It was with Bucky that Steve did his homework. With Bucky that he struggled through dinner, because Bucky always stayed till the end of visiting hours. Bucky was the one who grabbed Steve the first time his legs gave way beneath him – _actually_ gave way – and who somehow manage to drag him towards the nearest chair without dropping him.

It was with Bucky that Steve first crept out of the ward when they really shouldn't have. It was as they weren't supposed to do, was against the rules, but Steve felt a thrill for it. It certainly wasn't their last sneaking escape, though it was one of the few in which they didn't get caught.

Bucky stuck with him even during the visits from Steve's aunt and uncle, and though he was different, not as bright, perhaps, the natural draw that seemed innately _Bucky_ similarly drew the affection of Anna and Abraham. Anna was immediately smitten, just as quickly taking Bucky beneath her feathered wing as she had Steve, and though Abraham was a little slower to do so he very definitely expressed his similar fondness.

"He is a good child," Abraham had said in the brief moment that Bucky's mother hollered for his attendance. That sound, of Winnie Barnes calling, was as familiar as the click of heels along the length of the hall, of machines beeping or a trolley trundling.

Steve had looked to his uncle with all the familiarity and openness that he'd grown capable of. Abraham was different to Anna for some reason. Maybe it was the fact that Steve didn't know anything of him at all, but it was easier to see him in a stranger's light and to build his own opinions of him from there. Abraham Erskine was smart, was learned, was kindly and fatherly in a way that Anna always jokingly deemed him. It was a way that Steve was unfamiliar with for never having a father of his own.

He liked Abraham. Respected him, even. If Abraham told Steve to stop sneaking out of the ward, Steve though he might even do it. Maybe.

"I know he is," Steve had said in reply, because of course Abraham was right. Although, in saying as much, 'good' didn't really seem like a big enough word to encompass Bucky. "He's my best friend."

Abraham had smiled. "And a good best friend he is at that."

The 'good' that time had held a lot more weight than it had the first time Abraham spoke it. Steve had nodded in fervent agreement. Of everything he'd learned since he'd returned for his second admission, it was that his first assessment of Bucky hadn't been wrong. Bucky was… always wonderful. Always.

All things told, hospital sucked. It would always suck simply for what it was, what it entailed. And yet it could have sucked more. A lot, lot more. Steve would always acknowledge that. Things were… if not good – never good, not until he got better – they were at least endurable for his friend and the aunt and uncle he'd barely known before his admission. It was something he'd always remember. Things simply stuck.

And like many things, of Bucky, of Steve's mom, the outburst that erupted from Steve one day as he sat seated between Bucky and Abraham would be one he would never forget. He was tired, sick of being sick, but more than that he was struck by the sudden unfairness of it all. Of everything. By the fact that, after weeks, months even, into his hospital admission that was the second longest he'd ever spent at anywhere but his home, he clocked over into the wondrous world of remission.

Steve should have been happy for that. He should have been, and on a base level he was. Happy. Relieved. On the brink of sobbing for the fact that he had another chance. And yet…

* * *

 

_"It's not fair," he said. Even to his own ears, his voice was low and curt. It hadn't begun to crack as it would in the future, a future that Steve would get to see, to experience, but it was low nonetheless. It still crackled slightly._

_At his side, Bucky sat with one leg hooked over the arm of his chair and the other tucked to his chest. It was easy, casual, and entirely eye-catching, just as Bucky always was. He could draw the gaze of everyone in the room by simply sitting, and Gods forbid he smiled because he became his own sun when he did. Bucky had changed from the carefree boy he'd been when Steve had first met him, but his smile was still bright. Just… bright in a different way._

_On the other side of Steve's bed, Abraham sat in quiet contemplation. He leant elbows on his knees and at Steve's words he raised his gaze from where he'd been gazing with quiet contemplation into nothingness. "What is not fair, Steven?" he asked, his voice curling and jagged in an accent as strong as ever._

_In his bed, the bed that had been Steve's for weeks, he felt his toes curl into the mattress. His fingers grasped the sheets beneath him. Crisp. Always crisp, starched, almost like new. Steve stared at his knees, the pyjamas a plaid crosshatch. Gone were the days where he had to wear a robe at all times. Apparently dignity was afforded to those of an older age._

_Steve didn't care. He didn't care much for dignity anymore. Ever since his mom had died, there had been so little of trivialities that he'd truly cared for. Sometimes he could lose himself in the moment – when he was with Bucky especially, because Bucky was good at distracting him from himself – but not always. Not even most of the time._

_Because life wasn't fair. Steve was supposed to do good, to_ be _good, but how was such a thing possible with such unfairness?_

_"Nothing is," Steve said, and in his voice he heard the melancholy that had clung to him so often in recent months. "Nothing's fair. I'm getting better and –"_

_"How's that not fair?" Bucky asked, and the sharpness of his voice drew Steve's gaze towards him. He hadn't shifted in his seat, hadn't straightened or even frowned, but there was something almost scolding in his manner. He stared at Steve, blinking slowly. "How isn't it fair that you're getting better?"_

_"Because some people don't," Steve said. "Some people don't, and I shouldn't get the chance when other people don't."_

_"Some people?" Bucky said, and he did straighten in his seat at that. "You talking about your mom, then?"_

_Steve had been. He'd been thinking only of his mom, but when Bucky spoke he realised that it wasn't just her. He was in a hospital of sick and dying people, and he hadn't needed Bucky to tell him how it was. He hadn't needed Bucky to tell him, with so much offhandedness that the sharpness of his pain almost cried in audible agony, that Michael had died._

_Michael, little Michael, had been Bucky's friend for years, and he'd died. How was that fair, for Bucky or Michael?_

_"For anyone," Steve said, his gaze dropping back to his knees. He couldn't look at Bucky when his friend spoke like that. "Why should I get a chance when other people don't? Why should I get better when other people die, when my mom dies, when it should have been me who –"_

_"Don't, Steve," Bucky said quietly, and then he was sitting up fully in his seat. He moved with the fluid grace he'd possessed only a juvenile shadow of in his younger years, rising to standing beside Steve's bed. The stare he affixed upon Steve was almost a glare. "Don't you dare even say that."_

_"Not even if it's true?"_

_"It's not true."_

_"Not even if it's unfair?"_

_"Unfairness doesn't even come into it, you fucking idiot."_

_Bucky often swore these days, but rarely in front of an adult. That more than anything, that he did so before Abraham, told Steve of the strength of his feelings. Steve's mom had taught him that to curse was uncouth, but from Bucky it seemed to convey only sharp emotion, something utterly heartfelt. When Bucky swore, it drew Steve to a halt, and he couldn't retaliate immediately if he'd wanted to._

_Not that he needed to speak, because Bucky wasn't done. Hands balling into fists at his sides, his shoulders drew slightly towards his ears as he tensed. "Unfairness isn't even a part of it, Steve. Wake up and don't be stupid._ Nothing's _fair, but that doesn't mean that you getting better is a bad thing. It's good. It's right. Don't even think for a fucking minute that it's not, because you're allowed to get better."_

_Good and right. Those words would always remind Steve of his mom. He was silenced for a different reason this time, and he regarded Bucky as he shook his head, as he muttered, "Idiot," in a voice that was as scolding as it was just slightly miserable. Steve's maudlin hadn't alleviated, but when Bucky all but glared at him once more he couldn't voice it. It didn't seem Right – not Good – to preach of unfairness when Bucky spoke like that._

_"James is right," Abraham said, drawing both of their attention from their silent staring. Abraham was the only person besides Bucky's mother that Steve had ever heard call him 'James'. It sounded right coming from him, just a 'Steven' sounded right. "There is no such thing as unfairness when it comes to sickness and death. No one decides. It just happens."_

_It was easier to talk when Steve wasn't looking at Bucky. The melancholy reigning within him was tinged with an anger that could have been despair. It spewed forth in clipped words. "Maybe it shouldn't just happen. Maybe, if God was going to play favourites, he should choose someone who really deserves it rather than –"_

_Bucky's sharp snort cut him short, and it was Steve's turn to shoot him a glare. He wasn't sure if Bucky was derisive for his reference to God or to deserving – or both, as was most likely the case – but he didn't like it. "What?"_

_"What what?" Bucky replied, and the slight smirk upon his lips wasn't happy in the least. In the years that Steve hadn't seen him, Bucky seemed to have perfected the art of saying a thousand different things with a single expression._

_"You have something to say?" he demanded._

_Bucky snorted again, though less profusely this time. He leant backwards until he was propped against the arm of his abandoned chair. "Wasn't it you who always used to say that you'd make the most of getting better? When we were littler, you said that. All the time."_

_Steve had said that. He knew he had, because it had been an almost exact echo of his mom's words. They seemed less deserving now, less fair and right. With his mom gone. "Maybe I was wrong."_

_"You're never wrong,' Bucky said, smirking again. It was a different smirk, and Steve couldn't really understand this one._

_"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"_

_"Don't invoke hell, you goodie-two-shoes Christian boy."_

_"Shut up, Bucky."_

_"I do not believe you are wrong, Steven," Abraham said, drawing their attention once more. "I think James is very correct in thinking that you are most often right."_

_"That doesn't make it fair," Steve persisted. "It's not fair because –"_

_"Even if it isn't, Steven, are you going to deny it?" Abraham considered him with a tilt of his head. "Even if it isn't fair, are you going to shirk this opportunity? Are you going to disregard the second chance that God has gifted you simply to prove a point?"_

_Steve opened his mouth but words died on his tongue. Was he…? Could he…? Disregard – it didn't sound right when Abraham said it that way. Steve liked Abraham, respected him, and when he said things like that…_

_It was more than just that his uncle's words echoed those his mom had spoken years before. It was more and then some._

_Steve blinked rapidly, dragging his gaze back down to his pyjama knees. He felt himself slump, because though the maudlin still remained, the seething righteousness for the injustice of it all, that_ Steve _would get better when so many others wouldn't – he couldn't fight that. Abraham was right. Even if it wasn't fair, Steve wouldn't disregard it. He'd been given a chance._

_It was just that, for a moment, everything had seemed so… wrong._

_Bucky seemed to sense that Steve wasn't going to spout denial any longer. Reaching a hand towards him, he grasped Steve's shoulder. "Don't be so depressing, Steve. You should be happy you're checking out."_

_A sniff forced its way from Steve's nose before he could stop himself. He wasn't crying, hadn't cried since he'd told Bucky his mom had died, but the feeling was still there. "Yeah. I am."_

_"Right," Bucky huffed. "You sure seem like it."_

_"No, I am."_

_"You're going to check out and get heaps better, and go back to school and everything. Just like you did last time."_

_Steve drew his gaze towards Bucky where he still perched on the arm of his chair. Any aggravation he'd felt for him moments before was vanished without a trace. Steve could never stay angry at Bucky for long, and even that anger wasn't ever really real. "Not exactly like last time."_

_Bucky raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"_

_"We'll keep in touch this time. For real. I promise."_

_A slow smile, a different smile again to those Bucky had worn before, even years ago, spread across his lips. "Yeah, alright. Sure, Stevie."_

_"And I'll message you every day."_

_"Sure you will."_

_"And the day I grow taller than you, I'm going to shove your face in it."_

_Bucky laughed at that. He actually laughed, a burst of merriment that wasn't quite incredulous but was definitely teasing. Despite the tease, Steve felt himself smile in return; Bucky's laughter was harder won these days and thus seemed even more precious when elicited. Even Abraham, usually quiet, calm and considering in his stoicism, couldn't seem suppress his own smile. Bucky was like that. When he laughed – really laughed – the whole world seemed to laugh alongside him._

_"Yeah, sure," he said amidst a bubble of mirth. "That's really going to happen."_

_"It will," Steve said. He wasn't all that much shorter than Bucky and his mom had said his father had been tall. "I definitely will."_

_"Yeah. Sure."_

_"I will!"_

_Bucky laughed again. "Definitely. And you'll get some muscle, too, so you look less like a plucked chicken. And then you'll get all big and strong and sign up to the police academy or something, cause wasn't your dad a policeman? He was wasn't he? And then you'll do all that, and you'll be all good and righteous and…"_

* * *

 

Steve did get better. He got better enough to check out of hospital. He got so much better, in fact, that it was almost as though his second hospital admission hadn't happened at all. Just like the first time, he returned to see his doctors. He took moments to stop by the paediatric ward, to see the kids he'd left behind until even they left or… or didn't. He spent afternoons with Bucky, because Abraham and Anna were always obliging when Steve needed it. It was almost exactly the same as the first time, even.

Except that Bucky stayed with Steve.

It helped that Anna gave Steve a phone. That Bucky's was the first number he put into it, drawing the digits from the top of his head and adding it with rapid taps of his fingers that his aunt marvelled over.

"Are you sure you've never had one before?" she'd asked.

"It is a gift all children of this day and age are born with, I think," Abraham had said, his lips twitching just slightly in what would be a belly laugh in anyone else. Abraham was always quiet, always contained. Steve had grown to learn his little quirks, to understand that his uncle spoke at times without speaking or smiling.

That phone was a chain that bound Steve to Bucky; a golden chain that Steve clung to like a lifeline. Even when his visits to the hospital decreased to once a month and then even less frequently still, he didn't let go of Bucky. It was only after they'd met again, after Steve had realised there had been a Bucky shaped hole inside him that he hadn't been aware of, that he realised how much he wanted Bucky in his life. How much he needed him. There was no way that Steve was letting him go again.

Bucky was there when Steve returned to school full-time. He was there when Steve struggled to catch up with homework despite Bucky announcing that he sucked at work and, "You'd probably be able to teach me more than I could help you."

He was there when Steve um-ed and ah-ed over joining a local football team, exclaiming. "You should," Bucky said decisively. "You definitely should, even if you're still a toothpick. That doesn't even matter, and you said you'll get bigger, right?"

Steve had never had the chance to join a sports team before. His mom had never been able to afford it. The opportunity was like reaching for the stars; longed for, wished for, but inevitably impossible. Now Steve danced in the skies. His life would never be better without his mom, but his aunt and uncle certainly made up for much of the difference.

Bucky was the one who first realised how much Steve had grown. When he'd exclaimed, upon meeting up as they usually did on the weekend, that, "Holy crap, Stevie, I think you're as tall as me."

It was ridiculous to consider. Steve was still thin, still struggled to gain muscle. Abraham always said, "It is a work in progress for now, Steven, but it will get easier." But Bucky was right; Steve definitely grew taller.

Bucky shouldn't have said it. He'd pitted Steve with the challenge and on a physical level, Steve had confronted it. But Bucky was so, so much more than that.

He was Steve's texting friend.

He was his phone call friend for when Steve wanted to speak but not to Anna or Abraham.

He was his weekend friend, because even though the distance of the entirety of Brooklyn stood between them, Steve ensured they maintained their weekly meetings. He loved spending time with Bucky, joining him in their afternoon trips to the hospital that Bucky maintained after Steve left. Even if, the longer Steve knew him, the more he began to realise that Bucky truly was different to him.

It started with the grades. With the fact that Steve _knew_ Bucky was smart but he didn't do well at school. Anna had frowned when she realised. Frowned even more deeply when she overheard Bucky say something to the effect of hating school.

"What's not to like about school?" she'd asked, and Steve had to agree. He might not be all that fond of some of the other children, and especially the ones that looked at him strangely for being a 'sick kid' even when he no longer was, but he'd never disliked school. He'd never openly shirked his homework as Bucky did. Steve had been in hospital twice and away from the opportunity it provided; he understood what an opportunity it was.

But Bucky didn't like it. He disliked it so differently to Steve – it was like a looking at a picture from an alternative angle and noticing all of the hitherto unseen aspects.

And it didn't just stop there. Bucky had friends, too. That was something that Steve didn't share. Though Bucky claimed to Steve's delight that he "would always be my best friend out of everyone," the reality of it was that he _did_ have other friends. Lots of other friends. People knew Bucky. They appreciated him, admired him even, and adored him just as Steve had seen the kids do at hospital.

Bucky even had a girlfriend by the time when he was fourteen. Steve didn't like to think about that fact. It was… difficult to consider for reasons that he couldn't understand. All Steve knew was that he'd never actively disliked someone, never thought someone as stupid, as he unjustly did Dotty Dalton. It wasn't good, wasn't right, but Steve felt it anyway. Bucky was _his_ best friend, and even if he was fourteen and should _maybe_ be getting a girlfriend, it wasn't fair that Dotty would monopolise Bucky's attention.

Steve might have, just a little bit, been happy when they broke up. Maybe.

It was after Dotty that Steve truly realised: Bucky was handsome, which Steve knew he wasn't, even if Anna and his mom and even Bucky said he was. Bucky was the first of them to get a part-time job, which Steve didn't because his uncle Abraham told him that he should work to build his physical strength and make up for lost time rather than seek employment when he didn't need to.

Bucky was the kind of charismatic that found him a job in no time at all. He was funny, too, funnier than Steve ever was, and he had the innate ability to make other people laugh. And his smile. Steve had always thought Bucky's smile was something else.

And Bucky was always the first to try new things. He was Of the two of them, it was who first drank alcohol. Steve would never forget that day. He'd remember it so starkly because it was the last time he would ever see his best friend.

* * *

 

_Steve was nearly fifteen. Nearly fifteen, and it was the week after he'd realised he'd actually grown as tall as Bucky. They'd had a celebration, and despite his supposed indignation, Bucky had been happy for him._

_"You're still a toothpick," Bucky had said, prodding his arm, "but look at that! I guess you did have it in you."_

_Steve had known he had. His father_ had _been tall, or so his mom had always assured him, even if his aunt Anna wasn't quite so much. He'd told Bucky about his father, but he didn't remind him at their celebration. He didn't announce Bucky's oversight as Bucky dragged him to Taco Bell on a spontaneous after-school field trip._

_A week ago. How much had changed in that week._

_The fact of the matter was that Steve hadn't heard from Bucky since that day. Not for a whole six days. It was the longest they'd gone without communicating, without even a text, in years. Bucky didn't reply to his messages. He wasn't at the hospital when Steve went to check, which was all but unheard of. His mother wasn't either, and Steve didn't like the incomprehensible meaning behind the frowns that twisted the rest of the nurse's faces when he asked._

_It was concerning. It felt wrong. Steve_ knew _something was wrong._

_So for the first time in all those years, in a way that Steve hadn't even realised he been prohibited from, he went to Bucky's house. Even without visiting he knew the address. Bucky had told him a moment before muttering, "Don't come and visit, though. Dad's weird about people coming over." It was one of the few times Bucky had ever spoken of his father._

_The road leading towards Bucky's street was normal. The street itself was normal, unremarkable, just as plain as any other residential street in Brooklyn. A line of red-brick apartments stood sentinel on either side of the road, broken only by the intermittent skeletal tree or vibrant car that stood in silent mimic of their tooting and thrumming cousins chugging around distant corners. As Steve turned down that street, checking and double-checking the sign to be certain of his whereabouts, another car puttered down the road towards him before disappearing._

_Normal. The street was normal and unremarkable. Steve didn't even know what he'd been expecting._

_Apartment twelve of one-twenty-one to one-twenty five. That was it. Steve paused before the building, the same red-brick, the same normalcy, and stared up to the second floor where Bucky's apartment would sit. A little alley crept along one side of the building, barely a crevasse between the walls, and Steve could make out an escape ladder, grated and metallic and starkly empty in the gloomy darkness of deteriorating evening. Steve recalled Bucky had said his window was alongside the escape. Was that his room? It felt somehow sinful to even look. Bucky had asked him not to come and yet…_

_Steve had never been one much to do what he was told. He did the right thing, what he_ knew _was the right thing. If that meant encroaching upon Bucky's home out of concern, then Steve would do it. He rang the doorbell._

_It chimed and then nothing. There was nothing for so long that Steve rang it again. The buzz through the intercom was a little worn, a little weary, but the light flickered and after another pause there was a fumbling click._

_"What?"_

_Even skewed through the intercom, even crackling slightly with static, Steve recognised Bucky's voice. He thought he probably always would. Swallowing down an unexpected upwelling of nervousness, Steve leant towards the speaker. "Bucky?"_

_There was a pause. A crackle. Then, "Steve?"_

_"It's me."_

_"Why?"_

_"Why what?"_

_"Pretty sure I told you you're not… not supposed to come to my place."_

_Steve fought the urge to apologise. Then he discarded the fight and did it anyway. "I'm sorry. I was just worried."_

_Another pause. "Why?"_

_"Why what?"_

_"Why were you worried?"_

_Steve frowned. The intercom crackled. He opened his mouth to reply, then paused. Bucky sounded… strange. Sleepy, almost. Detached. As though he hardly attended to his own words. It was strange to hear given that he was always so deliberately spoken. To a casual listener it might not seem as such, but Steve knew; Bucky spoke light-heartedly but everything he said was considered before utterance. Now he just sounded… vague? Steve wasn't sure._

_More than that, why? Why would Steve be worried? Could Bucky truly not know? "Are you sick, Bucky?" he asked._

_Something that took Steve a moment to deduce as a snort sounded through the intercom. "Sick? What makes you think I'm sick?"_

_"You've been missing for a whole week."_

_"Missing? I've been here this whole time." There was a sound that was almost a laugh that clipped the end of Bucky's words and it sounded_ wrong _. Steve had never heard Bucky sound like that before. Something was very definitely wrong, and it was apparent for more than the fact that Bucky had all but disappeared for a week. It was more than because he hadn't been to their hospital, more than because the nurses had said his mother even hadn't been working there. It was because…_

_"That's not what I meant," Steve said, and he felt worry mingle with something like frustration within him. "Bucky, can I come up to your apartment, please?"_

_"Why?"_

Stop asking stupid questions, _Steve thought, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from speaking as much. "Because I want to see you."_

_"I only saw you the other day, Steve. Stop being clingy."_

_Steve flinched. He couldn't help it; the repulsive feeling zapped through him so suddenly that he couldn't have avoided it had he tried. That_ _was_ definitely _not Bucky. Not Steve's friend Bucky. He didn't say things like that. Besides, more often than not it was Bucky who came to pick_ Steve _up._

_"Bucky," Steve said shortly, "what's going on? Something's obviously wrong, so I'm asking you as your friend if you can please –"_

_"Go home, Stevie," Bucky sighed, and his voice sounded further away now. "Really, just go home." Then the intercom clicked._

_"Bucky?" Steve asked. He pressed the buzzer again, and the distorted, sickly sound hissed for another long moment. "Bucky?"_

_No reply._

_Steve was at a loss. He didn't understand why Bucky was acting as he was. Bucky had never spoken to him in such a way before; they teased one another, it was true, and sometimes, rarely, they even fought. But it was never sincere. Not really. It was always superficial, always only temporary. This was something… different._

_And something was wrong. Very wrong. With barely a thought, barely a moment's pause longer to press stubbornly at the buzzer, Steve turned from the doorway. He was climbing the escape ladder in the crevasse of an alley barely seconds later._

_The second floor. Clambering up the clattering metal grates of the wobbly ladder – wobbly in a way that Steve didn't like but chose to ignore – he would have paused at the second floor even if he hadn't known the number of Bucky's apartment. He ceased his climb the second the window came into view, the second he glanced through that window and saw Bucky all but stumble through the doorway from a visible hallway._

_Steve was clambering, all but scrambling, through the window in an instant. He struggled slightly with the stiffness – he might have been building strength, but Bucky was right that he was in many ways still a toothpick – and before Bucky had even glanced towards him he was tumbling through._

_There was a desk. Steve skidded off it. There was a chair. He nearly smacked his head on the leg. A pile of clothes – school jumper, a discarded uniform – pillowed his fall. Steve heard himself grunt, felt the wind rush from his lungs, and briefly squeezed his eyes shut in expectation of bruising pain._

_Blessedly, there was none._

_With a silent sigh of relief, Steve sat up. He propped himself on his elbows, glanced about himself, and absently shifted the chair from where it only remained standing for leaning against his leg. It was only then, after a brief bout or ordering himself had passed, that Steve realised Bucky hadn't spoken a word. He glanced towards him, mouth already open to explain, to question, to grumble that Bucky shouldn't be so cruel as to lock him out. Then he paused. Steve felt his eyes widen._

_Bucky had sounded different on the phone. Sick, maybe. Tired, possibly. Yet he looked even more different than he sounded, and Steve could only stare. It was in the mess of his hair, always easily yet almost artfully coifed. It was in the slouch of his stance, the heaviness of shoulders and the lean that made him seem almost as though he would fall over when Bucky was usually so full of energy. In his eyes, blurry and staring with disconcerting blankness at Steve when they were usually so full of amusement or mockery or jest. His face was pale, wan, and he blinked slowly as though on the verge of sleep._

_Most different of all, however, was the bottle. A single glass bottle hung from his fingers, barely held at all and seeming to defy gravity by remaining in his careless grasp at all. Steve caught a glimpse of a label, of the word_ Smirnoff. _He swallowed. Bucky didn't drink. He didn't drink alcohol, and Steve was sure he'd heard him claim that he didn't want to. Ever._

_"Bucky," he found himself saying._

_"Did you just climb through my window?" Bucky asked. He gestured vaguely and redundantly towards the half-open window, the bottle in his waving hand swinging loosely._

_Steve nodded. He felt less ashamed for his intrusion than he perhaps should have because that feeling of wrongness was only enhanced upon seeing Bucky. It was… very wrong._

_Heaving himself to his feet, Steve regarded at his best friend warily. He felt the frown tighten his forehead. "Bucky, what's wrong? Are you okay?"_

_"You did. You climbed through my window."_

_"What's happened? Are you -?"_

_"After I told you that you weren't supposed to come to my apartment and everything." Sniffing as though on the tail-end of a cold, Bucky wiped his face with a forearm and raised the bottle to his lips. A short swallow and then he lowered it again. "That's kind of low, Steve. A really shit kind of low."_

_Despite his words, Bucky didn't sound terribly upset. He didn't seem angry or even annoyed, and Steve had heard him as both before. Their fights might be superficial, but Bucky wore his heart on his sleeve. When he felt something, he showed that he felt it._

_Not then, though. Bucky's voice was the same detached almost-monotone it had been through the intercom. It didn't have a excuse of poor technology this time, either._

_Steve started a step across the room. "Tell me what's wrong," he demanded._

_Bucky blinked at him slowly. "Oh, so you're ordering me what to do, now? After just inviting yourself into my room?"_

_"Bucky, this isn't funny. What's wrong?"_

_"Nothing's fucking wrong. Absolutely nothing."_

_"Yeah, you sound really convincing," Steve said scathingly._

_"Fuck you." Another swig from the bottle and Bucky grimaced. When he spoke it was in a mutter, beneath his breath and likely more to himself than to Steve. "Tastes like shit. Don't know why he'd even want to drink it when it tastes like…"_

_Steve took another step towards Bucky, but Bucky didn't seem to notice. He was eyeing the half empty bottle with faint disgust, lip curling just slightly. "If it's so bad then why are you drinking it? I'm pretty sure that's illegal, Bucky. You're fifteen."_

_"Nearly sixteen."_

_"That doesn't make a difference," Steve said. Half a bottle? Bucky had drunk half a bottle already? Was that all he'd had? Even if it was, that couldn't be good. Steve felt something in his gut tighten. He didn't play by the rules all that often, but some were established for a reason. Something like underage drinking… it wasn't the kind of rule that Steve wanted to break. He was surprised that Bucky would, for that matter. Bucky wasn't the sort to think such a thing was 'cool' or pick up a trending fad. "Your mom would be pissed with you if she found out."_

_In actuality, Steve didn't know for sure if Winifred Barnes would be angry. He knew she was strict, that she was demanding of Bucky and his younger sister, and that she liked them to behave in certain ways. But that knowledge was gleaned from his exposure to her at the hospital. From what Bucky himself had told him. He knew next to nothing about Bucky's home life, his family, his apartment and its rules. Steve couldn't imagine Winnie allowing her son to do such a thing, but he couldn't be sure._

_Bucky snorted. "Yeah, she probably would be." He shook his head and the motion made him sway slightly, shifting to maintain his footing. Steve felt his frown deepen as Bucky continued. "Too bad, Mom. If you're so bothered by it, maybe you could come tell me, hm?"_

_There was a lot to those words. More than the slur of concerning drunkenness. More than the sway of Bucky's stance as he wiped his forearm over his face again. On an innate level, Steve knew –_ knew _– that something truly bad had happened. Something bad enough that Bucky would disappear for a week, wouldn't call or message him, would go so far as to drink half a bottle of vodka._

_Bucky didn't drink. Or at least he hadn't. What had happened?_

_"Bucky," Steve said quietly. "Where's your mom?"_

_"What?" Bucky asked, voice muffled as he continued to scrub at his face._

_"Your mom. Where is she? I went to the hospital but they said she hadn't been working in –"_

_"Fucked off," Bucky interrupted him. For a second Steve thought he'd told_ Steve _to 'fuck off', but then he continued, his cold-sniff sounding from behind his arm. "She's fucked off. Took Becky with her, too."_

_Steve hadn't met Bucky's sister Rebecca more than a handful of times. He knew of her but their brief exchanges face-to-face had been just that: brief. The passing consideration for the girl herself was just the same. What was more important was…_

_"Gone?" Steve stared at Bucky as he leant backwards slightly onto the doorframe. "What, you mean she's -?"_

_"Fucked off," Bucky repeated. He sighed, slumping even more heavily. The bottle of Smirnoff looked dangerously close to slipping from his fingers again. "It was only a matter of time, I guess."_

_"W… why?"_

_"Because Dad's a dickhead, is why."_

_Steve swallowed through an upwelling of confusion. "What do you mean? Is he –?"_

_"Seriously, only a matter of time." Bucky's head tipped back, eyes closing as he released a sigh so heavy it seemed to shake him. "Fucking knew it."_

_Steve felt frozen. He stood in the middle of Bucky's room and he couldn't move, could only stare at his friend with dawning understanding of his own ignorance. That he didn't know much about Bucky at all. That for all the years of their friendship, he hadn't truly know him – his family, his father or sister, where he lived. Any of it. He hadn't known that discord existed between Bucky's parents, let alone enough to cause Winifred to take Rebecca and leave._

_Leave Bucky? She'd left him behind?_

_She'd… fucked off?_

_"I don't understand," Steve said, because it was all he could say._

_Bucky didn't reply for a moment but when he did, his voice slurred with drink, it was utterly cynical. "I know you don't."_

_In a split second, Steve was incensed. Starting across the room, he grabbed the hanging bottle so swiftly that Bucky startled and all but flung it towards the makeshift desk. It was a miracle it didn't splatter clear liquid everywhere. Then he spun back towards Bucky, hands balling into fists. "Tell me what's going on."_

_Bucky's eyes had opened as his raised arm dropped. They were still blurred, still hazy, but they fastened on Steve and there was a dark depth to them that Steve hadn't seen before. Cynicism was still thick in his voice when he spoke. "There's not much to say. That's it."_

_"So your mom left?"_

_"Bingo."_

_"And you've been drinking."_

_"Two in one, you're on a roll."_

_"For a whole week?"_

_"Hey, it's not that unusual," Bucky said. He pushed himself off the doorframe, wavered slightly, then started towards the desk. "People do that all the time."_

_Steve watched him all but stagger in the direction of the window. He found himself shaking his head, even knowing Bucky wasn't watching to see him do so. "No they don't, Bucky. People don't do that."_

_"Then clearly you haven't been sharing the – the_ glorious _company of the people I have." The laugh that followed Bucky's words was almost a cough. He made it to the desk and leant heavily against it. Steve would have started hastily to his side if his hand had even twitched for the bottle of_ Smirnoff _, but it didn't. That much was a blessing, at least._

_He did approach, however. Slowly, and only with tentative steps because Bucky was making strange little hitching sounds that could have been laughter as much as it could have been something else. Steve paused at Bucky's side and, leaning forwards to peer at his face, he stared once more._

_Bucky wasn't crying. If anything he simply looked… tired. There was no other word to describe his world-weary expression._

_Steve wanted to ask questions. He wanted to know what had happened, the facts, to understand, because Bucky was his best friend in the whole world but he suddenly felt as though he hardly knew him at all. But Steve didn't ask. He could put aside his own wants for long enough to understand when Bucky simply needed the silent support. He was drunk – stupidly drunk, it was true, but Steve could reprimand him for that later – and right then, there was probably nothing that could be better for him than sleep._

_It didn't take much urging to direct Bucky to his bed. The mess of blankets and sheets, a discarded pair of slacks that looked like the other half of his school uniform, were all but ignored in favour of falling onto the mattress. Steve didn't protest when, with a distracted reach of his hand, Bucky curled his fingers around his wrist. He didn't say a word when Bucky peered up at him, frowned for a moment as though he was about to grumble something in discontent but then held his tongue. Steve didn't move the whole time that Bucky simply lay next to him, eyes growing increasingly heavy. All he did was listen as Bucky's breathing became softer, those breaths longer, and with a sigh released a murmur of words almost too quiet to be heard._

_"Life's so fucking shit… just be good to get away…"_

_Steve didn't sleep that night. His mind was abuzz with thoughts, with realisations. That Bucky wasn't as happy as he'd always seemed. That he wasn't so carefree and that those moments of silence, of detachedness, of darkness that had overwhelmed the bright, were far more deeply entrenched than Steve had previously considered. As he sat and stared down at his friend, still staring even when the afternoon light faded into darkness and swallowed Bucky's sickly features into a pale smudge instead. And he thought._

I haven't really been a very good friend, have I? _Steve thought guiltily. His mom had told him that he'd been given a second chance and he'd sworn to do good by it. To be a Good person and to help people. And yet he hadn't even known to help one of the people who meant the most to him in the world._

_Steve stayed the night, in the silence and quietness of an apartment that held just them. Or just them until a sound clattered through the front door at some ungodly hour and stumbled down the hallway. Steve watched the wall, following the intruders passage, but they didn't stop at Bucky's room. The staggering step, the thuds of a shoulder sliding and bumping across the opposite side of that wall, were wayward enough to be a walking stereotype; Steve might not spend time around the kind of people who got drunk, but he knew what they looked liked. What they sounded like. How they acted._

_Steve didn't forget the intruder's presence when the scuffling silenced but he didn't think on it further either. Bucky's father, he thought. Probably. After everything Bucky hadn't said of him, despite Steve's curiosity, he didn't want to meet the man. Not that night, anyway. Besides, he was staying at Bucky's side._

_When morning came, however, he slipped out of Bucky's bed. The sun had barely risen, but Steve climbed to his feet anyway. It was a school day. He'd received messages from his aunt the night before but little more than that. Anna had wanted him to return home before school that day and, reluctant as Steve was to leave, he knew he had to. With a last backward glance towards Bucky, prone and sprawled in exactly the same position he'd been when he fell to sleep the previous night, Steve left the room. Out the window, of course; he didn't want to run the risk of encountering Bucky's father._

_As it happened, his decision to leave was the worst choice Steve ever made._

_He went home. He saw Anna, exchanged a brief word with Abraham, and snatched a hasty breakfast. A change of school uniform, of schoolbooks, and a pause to grab some lunch money, and Steve was hastening out the door once more. Running, to make it back to Bucky's, to ensure he was alright and urge him to his feet and out the door because they both had school, had lives. Regardless of what had happened and how they would need to work something out, Steve wouldn't let them forgo those lives._

_Except he got the message._

You left.

 _A statement, not a question. Halfway to the nearest bus stop, Steve ground to a halt. He tapped out a reply on his cell phone._ Just for a second. I'm coming back right now.

_A pause followed, but only briefly. When the reply came, had Steve continued walking he would have ground to a jerking halt once more. The words were at once simple and horribly complex – far too much for Steve to understand._

Don't. It's okay. Not anymore, alright? I'm done with this, Stevie. Sorry, but I'm gone.

_It didn't make sense. In Steve's head, the phrase didn't make sense and continued to not make sense until he made it to Bucky's house. Until he riffled frantically through Bucky's abandoned room, his apartment and even the darkened room with the quietly snoring occupant at the opposite end of the suite. Until he visited the hospital and found no Bucky or Winnie for weeks and weeks, and his phone remained silent. Always silent of Bucky._

_For the second time, their friendship snapped. This time, it wasn't Steve who forgot to come back._

* * *

 

Bucky was gone. Really gone. He didn't reply to Steve's messages anymore. He never went back to the hospital and when Steve revisited his old apartment it was to find that, within a month, any trace of the Barnes family was gone. His father had apparently disappeared with barely a footprint left behind him.

It was a loss. To Steve, it was a different kind of loss to that of his mom, but it felt somehow just a bit the same. Steve didn't cry, couldn't cry, because the only two people he'd been able to cry to were gone. There was no recovering from that.

His mom was gone.

Bucky was gone.

It was… so wrong. Steve's world was turned on its head for the umpteenth time in his life. At that point, there felt like no recovery from that blow.

Over time, Steve got better. He said he would, that he was, and regardless of what Anna and Abraham, the kids at school or the teachers in their frowning queries, he meant it. It wasn't a bad thing that he grew a little more outspoken, no longer silencing himself when his opinion differed from those around him. It wasn't bad that he dedicated himself to his studies, to the football team he joined, to the gym that he joined because he _was_ a toothpick and he was tired of being nearly blown over by every other particularly strong gust of wind. It wasn't even so bad that he started to get into fights on occasion, because some people were stupid, and wrong, and despite trying to shift them back on track, sometimes others considered it appropriate to resort to fists to prove their point. Not Steve, but he would raise his own in retaliation when he had to.

He didn't tell Anna about that part, however. Abraham knew, because after years of living together his clinical eye grew capable of picking up the slightest discomfort on Steve's person. But he never told Anna. It became their secret.

Physically, regarding his illness, Steve got much better, and this time he promised himself that it would be for good. There wasn't going to be another time, another relapse. That was the important part, wasn't it? That was what everyone worried about. Steve vowed he wouldn't get sick again. It wasn't going to happen.

He finished school, and he did _Good_ , dammit. He did so good that his mom would have been glowing with pride for just how well he'd done with his second chance.

He signed up for the police academy, because he was going to do more Good and because his father, a father he'd never known, had been a policeman and the epitome of that goodness in his mind. Just like Bucky had said, it was somehow poetic that Steve would follow in his footsteps. He worked hard, spent every spare moment at the gym to make himself healthy, better, the best he could be. He'd always been tall, but the strength he built was a different kind to that which he'd needed to survive his illness, his mom's death, the misery that had followed and that had nearly consumed him.

Steve found his place in the force. He found his partner in first Sam Wilson and then, when the opportunity arose to shift his focus towards the criminal syndicates of New York City, in SHIELD. In Natasha Romanoff, in Tony Stark despite his quips and provoking jibes, in Wanda and Clint and Rhodie. Even in Vision, as entirely focused upon his computers as he was, and Bruce, who so rarely seemed to heed anything outside of a microscope if it wasn't Natasha. Bruce had been somewhat smitten with a thoroughly un-smitten Nat for as long as Steve had known him, and he loved that about him.

Steve found his place, and his work, his striving for goodness and to erase the bad, consumed everything. There was no life outside of SHIELD, nothing beyond HYDRA. He still remembered his mom, because he'd never forget her. He still called his aunt and Abraham every so often, and even met them for dinner when he could spare a night from work. He remembered Bucky, because despite the friends he'd made at school, the partners and colleagues at SHIELD that had become his family, Bucky had been his best friend and likely always would be.

How could Steve be anything but shocked, stunned, stupefied even, when he saw his friend for the first time again in fifteen years?

Bucky was different. In the brief moments that Steve saw him, saw his illuminated face pale in the night and expression blank, overlong hair hanging thick and tangled around his face, Steve had been thrown back into the past. It didn't matter that they were in the midst of a fight. It didn't matter that the knife in Bucky's hand had scored Steve with a smattering of strikes that stung with persistent complaint even then. It didn't matter, because…

"Bucky?"

Bucky stared at him. He was _definitely_ Bucky, because Steve would never mistake him, not even in the absence of his bright smile and warm openness that had always been a part of him. Not even after fourteen years. And Bucky… it might have been Steve's imagination, but he could have sworn that Bucky recognised him too.

They didn't talk. They faced one another for barely a handful of seconds. And then Bucky flowed into that eerie, aggressive violence of a predator once more, the aggression of the anonymous bodyguard he'd been when hidden behind the goggles. Steve barely had time to throw himself to the ground as Bucky's arm rose, the knife rose with it, and then it was flung towards him.

He hit the ground hard. The cement groundcover was cold, was just a little wet. The sound of Steve's heartbeat erupted in his ears, shocked, a different kind of persistence to that which had assaulted him in his flight in the escapees wake. He thought he heard a call, a sound, a shout, and the buzz of frantic voices crackled through his earpiece.

Steve barely heard any of it. With a lurch, he pushed himself to his feet, rolling to standing once more. He stood and in another lurch spun towards Bucky. Or to where Bucky had been, for the pool of wan light beneath the streetlamp was empty of his blurred shadow.

Bucky was gone. A small part in Steve's mind, the part that wasn't drawn to the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps, the part that wasn't drifting towards the notion of – _work, you're supposed to be working, there's a job to be done so go!_ – questioned that. It asked if he was sure, if it was possible, if _Bucky_ could possibly ever be a part of something as dark and twisted as HYDRA. But the larger part, the overwhelmingly larger part, had only one thought, and it rung in Steve's mind in discordant disbelief:

_That was… my Bucky._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Another long one! Thanks for sticking with the story - I hope you're liking it so far, wonderful reader, and I'd love to hear your thoughts if you get the chance. Thank you!


	3. Chapter 3

The feel of vinyl giving just slightly before his taped knuckles helped. Usually.

The heavy thud of impact, the slight squeak of a chain as the punching bag swung, was satisfying. Usually.

Usually, when Steve needed to vent his frustration, he found opportunity in the Central NYPD gym. All of SHIELD did, because chasing HYDRA in the thankless race they ran was nothing if not frustrating. And it did help. It _did._ Most of the time.

Not that day, however. Not that day, and not for the three days prior. Steve stood alone in the gym, the stillness before work hours utterly stagnant. He'd made it to Central even before the early-bird gym-junkies, which was saying something. Those early birds chafed at the five-thirty bit, beating the traffic to arrive hours before the office opened.

Steve beat them to it. That tended to happen when one slept at headquarters.

He wasn't the only one. Steve wasn't the only one to sleep in the SHIELD basement by half, with most of his colleagues and partners doing the same. This time it was deliberate, however; Steve hadn't woken with his face imprinted with computer keys. He hadn't really woken at all because while he 'slept' at the basement he didn't really sleep. Steve hadn't properly slept in days. Not since that night at Dogend Docks.

It had been a disaster. Or it had almost been. Three nights before, when SHIELD and the Asgard Squad had joined forced to take down the exchange between HYDRA and its associates, it had been so close to a disaster that Fury had next to nothing to say on the matter. Upon their return, he'd simply stared at them all. He'd stared, and then he'd ordered the single criminal captured in their web to be sent to holding.

Tony had taken a blow to the head. Rhodie was on crutches, though he denied the need for such. Thor had lost a frankly ridiculous amount of blood, most of it seeming to collect in his overlong hair, but hardly seemed to feel the loss for the matter at hand. Bumps and scrapes were felt all around, and more than one of their number had suffered from a bullet to the vest or had nearly lost more than a few layers of skin from a shot grazing too close.

So close to disaster. The feeling of vinyl beneath Steve's fist as he swung again couldn't erase that fact. Not ever.

But they had won. Of a sort, they had won a victory from HYDRA that they never had before. They had one of HYDRA's cronies, and from the amount of firearms and money stashed on his person – the money had to be only partial payment because though exorbitant it wasn't quite so expectedly and ridiculously overpriced – he might be more than just a disposable lackey. There could be intel in his head and Steve knew that, given time and the right resources, they could crack him. The force had a knack for cracking; they'd just never had the chance to utilise that knack on SHIELD's behalf before.

Injuries had been felt, but they had won.

Most of HYDRA had escaped, and yet it was still a win.

Loki's lead was just slightly and nearly disastrously wrong, and yet in spite of that they'd won.

So why did Steve feel anything victorious? He should have been happy. He should have been fiercely proud, as Tony had been when he'd grown lucid enough to hear the results of their mission. He should have been loudly satisfied like Thor or quietly so like Clint. He should have even been thoughtfully contemplative like Nat always was after a mission, regardless of whether it had been a success or a failure, and yet he wasn't. Steve wasn't any of that, because though his colleagues and SHIELD family had slept every night in the basement, all working and all frantically motivated, he was elsewhere. Very far elsewhere. Over ten years thrown back into the past, in fact.

For those three days, impossibly, Steve hadn't ben able to keep his attention on HYDRA. It was impossible because HYDRA had become his life. For so many years, putting them behind bars where they belonged – because they were _wrong_ and what they did and wanted to do was _wrong_ – had been Steve's primary goal. He lived and breathed the police force, just as his friends did. Just as his partner Sam did. Yet the moment Bucky was thrown into the mix, everything changed.

_The boy called Bucky squirmed and spun beneath Michael's assault, throwing the little boy into his arms with more ease than an eight year old should manage with a kid more than half his own age…_

_He grinned mischievously to Steve as he slipped him a note across the table, and that grin barely faltered when the in-patient teacher cuffed him over the back of the head for 'distracting the other kids'. The teacher never scolded anyone but Bucky, and yet Bucky still attended the classes…_

_He danced before them in a performance..._

_He cackled with laughter loud enough to make up for all of the patients who couldn't manage such an utterance themselves..._

_And he held Steve when Steve cried. Steve would never forget that; his best friend's warm, the smell of his school uniform, sun-dirty and warm, the reassuring sound of his heartbeat in Steve's ear…_

And then beyond that.

_A young man, little more than a boy still, leaning against the doorframe of Steve's room and regarding him with an unfamiliar expression…_

_An embrace that chewed through the years between them, erasing awkwardness and hurt and soothing the wounds of distance and those newly erected from loss, from illness revisited…_

_Of wandering hallways…._

_Of sharing a muffled laugh…_

_Of jostling shoulders, endless chatter and companionable silences…_

And then more.

_A sticky window that struggled to slide open…_

_A bottle of Smirnoff…_

_Pale skin, pale face, heavy eyes sadder and deeper than Steve had thought possible of him. It wasn't possible,_ shouldn't _be possible. Not for his Bucky…_

_And a text message that was the end of it all._

Steve remembered so much, and in bursts and stutters, long recollections and movie-reel moments. He hadn't thought of Bucky in years but he'd never forgotten him. He was still his best friend, still the best friend he'd ever had. Steve loved his SHIELD family, his colleagues, those of such a fiercely determined like-mindedness that they almost seemed to think on the same wavelength at times. He loved his partner Sam, even when he joked and prodded at Steve's supposedly 'holier-than-thou' commitment to law enforcement. He loved Nat, who was as much his conscience as the devil riding on his shoulder at times. Tony with his genius and often far too loud mouth, Rhodie with his exasperated persistence, Wanda her innocent determination and Clint with his smirking perceptiveness. Each and every one of them, even the Asgard Squad, were dear to him.

But none were quite like Bucky. Steve should have been thinking about HYDRA, about the doors that opened for them with Loki's intel, his insider position, but he didn't. He couldn't, because…

_Knife in hand..._

_Black suit that made him stand out only more starkly beneath the glow of the streetlight…_

_A blank expression, devoid of emotion and feeling and recognition…_

_"Bucky?"_

That knife had been flung. Steve liked to think, had to think, _hoped_ , that it had been launched for a lack of recognition on Bucky's part. That Bucky hadn't truly wanted to kill him, _wouldn't_ kill him, even if it was his job.

His job.

 _It can't be,_ Steve thought for the thousandth, the millionth time in the past seventy-two hours. _He can't be part of HYDRA. It's not possible._

Steve knew that was as much a hope as a belief. That Bucky could be so vastly different to him, so corrupted as to join _HYDRA…_ There was something so wrong with HYDRA that it physically hurt to consider.

The slam of Steve's knuckles into the punching back crackled. Something split. A tearing sound splintered in the otherwise silent and Steve didn't know if it was his skin or the vinyl. He found he didn't really care either way.

"That bag do you a personal wrong or something?"

The sound of Sam's voice halted Steve mid-swing. Pausing, he glanced over his shoulder. The gym was wide, long, and cluttered with machines, and Steve had only flicked half of the lights on, but he could still make out Sam across the room. He leant against the wall alongside the primary doorway, arms folded across his chest as he regarded Steve. At Steve's attention, he pushed himself from the wall and started towards him.

Steve turned back to the punching bag but didn't restart his strikes. He was breathing heavily, he noticed detachedly, and sweat clung to his brow. The muscles in his arms muttered imprecations that Steve would never voice himself, and he absently drew his gaze towards the clock on the other side of the wall.

Nearly two hours he'd been there. How had he missed that? Not that it bothered him unduly; when Steve lost himself in his thoughts, he often similarly lost track of time.

Sam stopped at his side. With exaggerated scrutiny, he leant forwards and squinted at the punching bag. He nodded decisively as he straightened. "Yep, that's a split."

"Is it really?" Steve said detachedly, dropping his gaze down to his knuckles. The tape had likely protected them from the worst of the damage, but the skin above and below was brightly reddened regardless. Two hours… it was understandable. Steve couldn't really blame his skin for that.

"Really," Sam said. Shifting in step, his silence drew Steve's attention towards him. His eyebrows were raised and his gaze trained almost accusingly on Steve's upper arm.

"What?" Steve asked.

"That's got to be some kind of genetic enhancement you've got going on there." He prodded Steve's bicep with a finger. "Fucking ridiculous."

Steve smirked. "Is it so hard to believe?"

"When you say you used to have twigs for arms as a kid? Yes."

"It's true."

"Fucking ridiculous…"

Steve shook his head, and, though it might have been a little smaller than his usual, he felt himself smile. Sam was a truly fantastic friend; if for nothing else, when Steve fell into a slump he was more than capable of kicking him out of it. Sometimes forcibly and a little excessively, too. Or most of the time, anyway. That he always poked fun at what Nat called Steve's 'Greek hero rendition', which was nothing short of a vast exaggeration, was just one more way of doing so.

Reaching up to the punching bag, Steve grazed a palpating finger across the vinyl. "What're you doing down here so early, anyway?" he asked.

"It's five-thirty in the morning."

"I know. That's why I'm asking."

"How long have _you_ been down here?"

Steve's fingers paused as they found the split – he'd have to apologise to the gym manager again – and he glanced towards Sam. "What do you mean?"

"How long, Steve?"

Steve shrugged. "I don't know," he lied. "I didn't see when I came in."

"Bullshit," Sam muttered not quite unobtrusively beneath his breath. Then a little louder, "Not that I don't appreciate your commitment, but this is a bit excessive."

"What's excessive?"

"You. Your constant switch between paperwork and the gym? It's not healthy."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that what everyone in SHIELD does?"

Sam's own eyebrow twitched. "No. We mix it up with a bit of sleep thrown in there, too."

"When's the last time you saw your girlfriend, Sam?"

"She's not my girlfriend. Not really. And don't change the subject."

Steve folded his own arms across his chest. "Don't _you_ change the subject. You're just as bad as me. When's the last time you saw her? I thought you liked her."

"We're not talking about this now," Sam said, lips beginning to pout.

"And why not? What's this all about, Sam?"

"I believe it's called an intervention," Tony's voice called from the entrance to the gym.

Steve turned and felt Sam turning alongside him. Just inside the door, in almost the exact spot that Sam had leant but a minute before, Nat stood with her usual quiet, predatory grace. At her side, arm propped high on the edge of the doorway, Tony slouched as though he owned the doorframe and everything beyond it. The pair of them were opposing ends of the elegant spectrum; while Nat breathed deadly stillness, Tony was all loud swagger and eye-catching attractiveness. Steve had noticed it, and not only the first time that he'd met Tony. He was comfortable enough with his sexuality to admit that he could acknowledge them both of them as attractive.

Not in that moment, however. The brief, candle-like splutter of a good mood that Sam had brought with him dimmed slightly at that single word. "An intervention?"

"Yeah," Tony said, voice still overloud. "That's what people do, isn't it? Putting a stop to a destructive path and all that? Save yourself from yourself?"

Steve frowned. "Saving? What exactly do I need saving from?"

"Self-destructive behaviour."

"I'm not self-destructive."

"Yeah. You are."

"Tony, I'm not –"

"You are."

"Could you stop for a moment," Steve said, raising a silencing hand. "What is this actually about? I don't need an intervention."

Tony straightened from his slouch and, with the easy swagger he always draped himself in, he wandered into the gym. In the collared shirt and loosened tie that he wore, the expensive shoes and slacks somehow immaculately pressed, few would guess that he spent as much time as anyone else in SHIELD within its basement walls.

Drifting towards the nearest machine – a treadmill that looked horribly blunt and cumbersome before the power of Tony's swagger – he pinned Steve with an objectionable stare. "Right, so when I'm labelled with PTSD an intervention is okay, but when you don't sleep for three days and beat the crap out of your hands on an inanimate object every chance you get it's not?"

"You _do_ have PTSD, Tony," Nat said behind him, referring in the minimalistic way that all of SHIELD did to Tony's backlash from his nearly disastrous past missions. His time in law enforcement before SHIELD hadn't been great, and that was the biggest understatement anyone could make of the situation.

Tony glanced her way only briefly. "Correction: _did_."

"Because of the intervention," Sam said.

"Funny, I don't remember asking for your contribution."

Sam snorted.

"There's nothing wrong with me," Steve said, folding his own arms across his chest. "I'm fine."

"Fine?" Tony asked. "Right. That's what fine looks like. Picture perfect _exactly._ "

Despite his offhanded and almost offensive manner, Steve caught a hint of real concern behind his words. He didn't even know if Tony, Nat, and likely Sam had really staged an intervention at all, but he felt the intention nonetheless. Out of everyone at SHIELD, they three were probably his closest friends – Sam because he was his partner, Nat because she was his manager of sorts, and Tony because he was Tony. Tony didn't let himself be excluded from anything. And though they professed hard love if they admitted to love at all, Steve knew they cared for him. Just as he cared for each of them in return.

 _An intervention_ , Steve thought. _Do I really seem that bad?_ He hadn't considered how he would look on the outside to a passing observer. Steve was far too introspective of late. He should be considering HYDRA and the giant step they'd taken, should have taken a passing glimpse into the holding area more than the few instances he had simply to check, but he couldn't.

Because of Bucky.

 _Maybe I really am that bad,_ he thought. Then he shook his head, drawing himself from his momentary lapse. He drew his attention back to Tony. "The thought's appreciated, by all of you," he glanced briefly towards Nat and Sam, and their lack of objection bespoke their contribution, "but I'm really alright. Just thinking."

"About HYDRA?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Steve said, because it wasn't a lie. He was thinking about HYDRA. Just about one particular – potential? – member of HYDRA.

"Is this going to be a problem?" Nat asked, and despite the professionalism of her question, Steve could here the gentle, probing askance. The question of 'are you going to be alright?' despite not truly knowing what was wrong. To anyone else, Steve supposed he would simply seem as obsessive and one-track-minded as the rest of SHIELD, if a little more excessively so. Maybe he should keep it that way; no one had to know

Steve shook his head. "No. It's alright. I've just been thinking."

"You? Thinking?" Tony barked a laugh. "I thought you were joking the first time. That's dangerous."

"You're an ass," Sam said.

"Thank you. Being likened to a donkey has always been an aspiration of mine."

"One you probably fulfilled at the ripe old age of a toddler, right?"

"Oh, the snark. It burns, Sammy. It burns."

Nat, as did Steve, ignored the exchange. "That's probably a good thing," she said, straightening from her lean against the far wall. "Probably for the best that we work out any problems _before_ things start to get dirty."

"They're getting dirty?" Steve asked.

"Filthy dirty," Tony said.

"What's happening?"

"We just got a call from Fury," Nat said. "Early bird that he is, he'd like to start things cracking before most of the department gets in. And given that SHIELD is still in functioning operation…"

"Because we're all night-owls that don't sleep," Sam said.

"Actually, I've mastered the art of working while I sleep," Tony said. "You should try it some time. It's very efficient."

"We're being called for a meeting," Nat said, ignoring them both once more. "Apparently our guy started speaking."

"The HYDRA perp?" Steve said, and he was already striding across the room towards the exit of the gym. He felt more than heard Sam follow a step behind him.

Nat shook her head. "Not that perp. He's as tight as a zipper."

"Then…?"

"Loki," Tony said. "Our trickster god has another lead. You ready to jump into the fray again, Captain?"

Steve felt a fierce smile take hold of his lips. Was he ready? To take down HYDRA or to find Bucky, he wasn't sure, but he was. Steve had been ready for years.

* * *

Loki was, Steve quickly decided, perhaps the best thing that had happened to SHIELD in years. Possibly ever, and it wasn't even directly SHIELD that he happened to. In the long, silent, covert war against HYDRA, a war that had been fought as a juggling act by the majority of the NYPD and wholly yet unsuccessfully by SHIELD, it was a step. A giant step, and even bigger for the fact that SHIELD hadn't really taken a step in…

Well, ever. Not really. Not even the brief discoveries of abandoned bases or the footprints of escapees could compare.

What Loki provided went above and beyond Steve's experiences. SHIELD had an ear in HYDRA's midst, and though the intel was vague at best, sometimes little more than, "Something's happening here at this time. Go get 'em", it was better than nothing. It was far better than nothing.

And they won. Again and again. Small victories, but SHIELD _won_.

There was the suppression of the East-End Warehouse complex that was a HYDRA base. Word had clearly gotten out of their discovery before SHIELD arrived on the scene, but not fast enough. They apprehended another two members of HYDRA at that discovery and countless other artefacts to be used as evidence against the organisation in future trials.

There was the drug bust on January the sixteenth, a bust working alongside the Asgard Squad that unearthed the second largest plot of cocaine in New York City history. That was _huge_ , and even if the culprits themselves were elusive, there was evidence enough at the scene to pin the blame on HYDRA. If nothing else, the NYPD certainly started to look at SHIELD a little differently after that.

There was the Goldendew Bridge Battle, as it was so pompously called by first Tony and then, regrettably, the entirety of the NYPD. An all out brawl rivalling that of Dogend Docks, guns blazing and scrapes and bruises inflicted to both sides. Another two members were apprehended at the scene, thrown into the lot with their three fellow HYDRA snakes.

More busts. Infiltrating digital highways. Sneaking into underground bases and clubs and warehouses that never would have been discovered if not for the intel provided to them from Loki. SHIELD took one step and then more, and more, and for the first time in over a decade they felt they were actually getting somewhere.

It wasn't always entirely successful. As on their first night at the Docks, sometimes the intel was just slightly faulty. Just slightly dislocated in a way that could almost, _almost_ result a disaster if not for the quick thinking of SHIELD's members. A difference in timing. A difference in number of opponents. A slight shift in location that nearly caused the entire operation to be turned on its head.

Loki was blamed for that. Unjustly, perhaps – or entirely justly, Steve wasn't always sure – but he was. At first, there was frustration:

"Perhaps he has been fed incorrect information himself?" Vision suggested.

"Is he doing it on purpose?" Clint asked. "It kind of feels like he is."

"He is not!" Thor replied, his voice a low grumble that somehow sounded like a shout at the same time. "My brother would not be deceiving us by providing false intelligence. He is not a liar."

Rhodie frowned shrewdly as Tony chortled at his side. "Says the Norse god of his trickster brother," he said before chuckles. "Tell me, was he named Loki before or after he started working for your primary criminal opponents?"

No one flinched when Thor slammed a heavy fist into the table of the conference room. "You insinuate untowardly, little man."

"Little?" Tony arched an eyebrow.

"But not unjustly," Rhodie said, leaning back in his chair and tipping his head back slightly. "He does work with HYDRA, doesn't he?"

The Asgard Squad exchanged glances that seemed to grumble as much as Thor did, though in a silent kind of way. Thor muttered something that was actually indecipherable beneath his breath before raising his voice once more. "We're working to remedy that fact."

"And it's changing at a roaring speed, is it?" Tony asked. "HYDRA's been involved in more homicides and drug and arms deals in the past three decades than any other organisation that we've unearthed."

Thor's eye twitched. "Have I mentioned that we're somewhat… distantly related siblings?"

Tony dissolved into scoffing chortles once more.

After the frustration came exasperation. Even resignation in most of SHIELD and more than a few of the Asgard Squad, too.

"He's definitely doing it on purpose," Clint sighed, speaking loud enough to be heard throughout the entirety of SHIELD's basement.

"Does he think it is funny?" Wanda asked, genuine curiosity colouring her words. Her feet were propped on her desk, phone pressed to her ear as it seemingly always was. "Does he perhaps gain some amusement out of providing false intelligence?"

"Technically it's not false," Vision said, not even glancing up from his computer as he typed. "It could be a simple error."

"No one makes such small but recurring errors so often," Clint said.

"You'd know that for a fact, would you?" Nat asked, leaning against his desk and staring at him pointedly.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I remember the Academy days, Clint. Remember who's in the room before saying something."

Clint smirked but he didn't explain to any of the oblivious SHIELD members. No one asked, either.

"It wouldn't be so bad except that it's _every time_ ," Sam said, and the rolling of his pen between his fingers grew swifter in his own exasperation. "You'd think he'd get bored of it."

"Thor definitely cannot do anything to divert his attempts at seeking entertainment in such a manner?" Vision asked. He still hadn't paused in his typing.

"Haven't you heard?" Tony called from across the room where he was doing… something in Bruce's doorway. Probably prodding him into agitation, Steve thought. He hadn't seen Bruce's 'Hulk' in a few days and it seemed to agitate him in turn. "Thor and Loki are only 'distantly related'."

"Aren't they brothers?" Wanda asked.

"Yep."

"Then…?"

"Don't question it."

None of them did. Just as, despite Fury's pointed glances towards Thor whenever they met post-op and post-Loki's misinformation, and despite the fact that Steve knew he wasn't the only one who believe Loki was indeed doing it on purpose and was growing just a little tired of it, they didn't really protest. They were getting the job done. They were getting more of the job done than they had in years. In _ever_. It was only a shame that, despite their successes, their victories and triumphs, those they did apprehend turned out to be something less than key players. That was perhaps the worst part.

That and the fact that none of them talked.

Or it was the worst part in most of SHIELD's opinion. With the NYPD largely taking a turn in their dismissive and slightly condescending opinion of their forces, with the opportunities for operations coming thick and fast and HYDRA bases being successfully infiltrated on a recurring basis, all else was going swimmingly. Everyone thought so.

Except for Steve.

He was satisfied that they were making headway. He was fiercely proud whenever they made a bust, righteous when they apprehended a criminal who deserved it, thrilled by the chase and the feeling of doing something Good. He was finally getting somewhere. He was finally doing something, truly making the most of the second chance to make a difference, to do what was right, that he'd been gifted as a child. That felt satisfying in a whole new way.

And yet in those first two months when everything changed, Steve barely slept. Not that much of SHIELD slept, but Steve even less so. He still spent every hour not working or scouring Loki's intel – or the less reliable intelligence founded elsewhere – in the gym smacking a punching bag or running miles on a treadmill. He still spent far too much time trapped in his own thoughts.

And it was all because of Bucky. Because regardless of how many operations they conducted, how many successes were made – regardless of how many HYDRA members they happened across, how the number climbed from three, to seven, to ten…

There was no Bucky.

Steve didn't speak of it with anyone. He knew Tony persisted with his suggestions for an intervention. He knew that Sam spent as much time at the gym alongside him in some kind of moral support, and Nat kicked him from that gym to, "Go eat something, junkie," or because, "You've been here for nearly three hours, we need to work now."

Steve needed them. He knew he needed his friends for otherwise he ran the risk of losing himself to his thoughts entirely. And yet even with the support, he didn't stop thinking. Not for a moment. Even more because, as time stretched from when he'd seen Bucky, he began to question himself and the situation at large. Not that he hadn't seen Bucky at all, but that he would ever see him again.

_Bucky, where are you?_

That thought in particular trundled on endless repeat in his mind again and again. In a strange kind of way, that Bucky existed and existed as a part of HYDRA made Steve silently empathise with Thor in an unexpected and unprecedented way. Sometimes not so silently, too.

"It was an honest mistake," Thor grumbled, cheek twitching as it was want to do when he defended Loki in an entirely indefensible situation. "How was he to know the exact number of assailants we were to encounter?"

"Twelve as opposed to seven is a pretty big difference, Thor," Rhodie said quietly.

"And yet we still overcame their forces."

"Yeah, because we're awesome," Tony said. "Not because your ass-hat of a brother helped any."

"Hold your tongue," Sif hissed. "Think of whom you speak."

"You mean a HYDRA member who takes amusement from dropping hints and leads of questionable validity?" Clint said.

"See? Ass-hat," Tony reiterated. "No offence or anything, Thor, but given he is literally part of the enemy, an enemy we've been fighting for _years,_ he's kind of a –"

"Tony," Steve said sharply, and there must have been something in his voice just a little different to usual because Tony silenced. Everyone did for that matter, though Steve only noticed on a detached level. "That's enough."

That silence persisted for a long moment. Steve pinned Tony with his stare unblinkingly as Tony's eyebrows slowly rose. He opened his mouth to reply, took a breath, paused, then finally spoke. "Alright, Cap. Calm down. No drama needed." And that was the end of it.

Steve was grateful for that. It was foolish of him, perhaps, to defend Loki on the basis that he, in even the slightest way, resembled Bucky's position. But he couldn't help it. He couldn't stop himself because to him… despite the evidence that pointed to Bucky's involvement in HYDRA, he couldn't think him the enemy. He was his _Bucky_.

And he was going to find him again. He would. He just had to manage the actual finding part.

Which was why, when Loki's intel passed through Thor ten weeks after their correspondence had first been initiated and bespoke of an arms deal similar to that of their first operation, Steve was buzzing with energy. This could be it. He'd seen neither hide nor hair of Bucky for weeks, had only glimpsed him so briefly when he had, and this was _something_. A situation resembling their first. If there were ever a chance that Bucky would be happened across, it would be now. Steve would find Bucky, and should he meet him in the operation… well, he'd work something out. Something to get Bucky out.

Of course, things never went quite to plan.

The stretch of narrow alley reached before him was silent. It was silent at first, and the murmur of voices that didn't sound beyond his earpiece twisted into Steve's ear.

"So what are we guessing this time?" Tony asked. "Misnumbered? Wrong location and two streets over? Not a arms deal at all but something else entirely?"

"Yeah, real brave of you, making your speculations when Thor's not here to chastise you, Tony," Clint said, and Steve could hear the smirk in his voice. He was right, too, Steve knew. Despite Tony's incessant taunting and teasing of just about everyone, he did demonstrate a modicum of restraint when Thor's hackles rose too high.

"Come on, everyone knows it," Tony huffed.

"Yes, but we have the good sense not to voice that knowledge," Wanda said.

"Oh, listen to you? The little witch has developed a backbone."

As was strangely typical of him, Vision rose to Wanda's defence. "I believe she always had it, Mr Stark. She just chooses her battles wisely."

"Thank you, Vision," Wanda murmured.

"Are you saying I don't choose wisely?" Tony asked, indignation apparent in his tone.

Steve would never know. Or he knew, but he'd never hear Vision's usual clinical reply, for in that moment, the alley erupted with noise and movement. And Tony was right in one regard at least; it wasn't how Loki had described it would happen.

An arms deal was one thing. Dangerous. Potentially deadly. Requiring defences installed and often offensive defence at that. Appropriate equipment, weaponry of their own, a thorough plan established to minimise causalities; they had it all in place.

Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – it wasn't needed. Loki's intel had been incorrect, but not in the way that it usually was. Not to SHIELD detriment. There was no deal. There was no mass battle. Not this time, anyway.

Steve threw himself down the alleyway in the direction of the three fleeing members as they burst from the only door in the unremarkable wall. They weren't visibly armed but that didn't mean anything. Steve still drew his Glock and raised it with the procedural shout of, "Halt, the police!" echoed by Sam's, "Put your hands in the air!" Suffice it to say they neither stopped nor put their hands in the air. Not that it was a problem.

Steve flew after them. He took down one as soon as he drew within reaching distance, striking a blow with the butt of his pistol that sent the man tumbling. In the darkness, seemingly appearing out of the shadows at the opposite end of the alley, Nat launched herself at another. Then, from on high – because he always somehow perched above head height – Clint took down the third.

Weapons were possessed. Shoulders were pushed to the ground. Hands were fastened in cuffs and in seconds the entirety of SHIELD surrounded the lot of trio. There was no escape and it was over almost as soon as it had started. Steve was hardly breathing hard.

He stared at the three figures sprawled before him. In the darkness, it was hard to see them, hard to make out their features, but he saw enough. The distant streetlight filtering from the mouth of the alley showed him enough.

There was no Bucky. Steve wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed for that fact. Either way, when they got back to the office, when he hashed out his report for a singularly unremarkable operation that was nothing if not disheartening despite their apprehending, Steve fell into his thoughts. His brooding, as Nat called it, because though he supposedly didn't glare, he was quite adept at that.

Steve didn't care. He didn't care that he brooded and that Nat always did her best to kick him out of his funk. He only took himself from the SHIELD basement down to the gym; if nothing else, he could take out his relieved disappointment on the nearest available punching bag.

* * *

Three months.

Three months it had been. Three months since Loki's intel had first been integrated into SHIELD operations. Three months and SHIELD had successfully pulled off more of those operations, apprehended more HYDRA members – thought low-ranking at that – than ever before. Three months…

And Steve had never been more frustrated in his life.

He shouldn't have been. Wiping clean the smear of HYDRA, a seemingly impossible task for a force such as SHIELD that consisted of barely eight primary members, had never been closer to possible than with each passing day. Steve wasn't a fool; he knew that they had miles yet to run, that those operations were successful only because they hadn't truly been targeting one of HYDRA's leading heads. He knew that it would most likely be after Steve's time that they'd triumph wholly.

But they would. He had confidence in SHIELD and its goals enough for that. They would defeat HYDRA.

And yet, despite their successes, Steve was frustrated. For the first time in years, he was distracted from his single-minded focus. He purpose in life was to be Good. To do Right. To help people in whatever way he could. And yet, when Bucky came onto the scene, it was as though a third priority shouldered its way into the midst. It was a priority that held no tangible form, no worded intention, but simply an idea.

Of Bucky.

Steve was no closer to that idea than he was to overwhelming HYDRA single-handedly. He didn't even know where to start, and the disbelieving suspicion that it wasn't Bucky, _couldn't_ have been him, niggled at him more incessantly every day.

Steve still knew he'd seen him, for how could he not? And yet he grew less and less confident that seeing him meant that Bucky was there at all. That he was anything more than a passing, insubstantial ghost.

Steve knew why Bucky had left years ago. Or he knew part of it, at least, and could speculate on the other part. That didn't mean that he didn't desperately want to find him anyway. To speak to him. Because Bucky was… he was Steve's _Bucky_.

That thought hung with Steve as he took his first day off in months. Officers of SHIELD didn't take time off; even weekends were a luxury that most didn't enjoy. It was simply that the undivided motivation, the longing to suppress a chaotic threat that incessantly nagged at them, hadn't lessened even slightly for their lack of success. If anything, over the years the holistic dedication of the team had only intensified. Such intensification grew more profound when success was actually realised.

That one day, Steve took off. He didn't particularly want to, but he did, and the reason lay in the fact that he hadn't seen his uncle in weeks. Anna made it a point of dropping by Central NYPD on a frequent occasion, and even those who had been less than appreciative of SHIELDs efforts welcomed her. Anna was a friendly face, the kind who somehow seemed a mother to all, and though the baking that she religiously brought with her teetered on the edge of indigestible, her good-humour and brightness more than made up for it. Steve appreciated her visits; he loved his aunt in a way that was as much innate as learned, and it lessened none for seeing her so sporadically in his workplace.

Abraham he saw less. Still a practicing doctor well into his sixties, his own hours were nearly as consuming as Steve's. Dr Erskine was a specialist in his field, and the NYC Oncology-Research Community he and his colleague Dr Michaels had established nearly eight years ago was a booming success. Everyone in New York City's medical circles knew Abraham's name and some people without, too.

The day was drifting tentatively towards warm as Steve left Central NYPD. He'd slept in the basement the night before, yet as it often was of late, such sleeping had been intentional rather than a spontaneous use of his keyboard as a pillow. He'd put in nearly three hours of work that morning and another in the gym simply for the sake of routine, and it was only when a hint of fulfilment was attained that Steve felt able to leave the building and make for his uncle's hospital.

He'd nearly forgotten spring was half over. So much could happen in the surrounding world when one only surfaced at night for a mission or on brief coffee runs because those from the department lunchroom were _appalling_ in taste. Or so Tony claimed; Steve had never had much thought for them besides their contribution to his caffeine intake.

The walk was nearly twenty minutes from the nearest subway, and the glare of the sun was blinding. Apparently Clint's suspicion that it would be raining was wrong; his eerie perceptive skills extended up to and yet not outside of work-related issues, and apparently didn't stretch its fingers as far as plucking the forecast from the NWS. Steve would have to remember that.

It was almost a relief to get out of the sun as Steve stepped inside the walls of the hospital, exchanging solar for fluorescence. Stepping through the familiar halls of a hospital that was only familiar because of Steve's visits to his uncle, he took himself past endless doors and along patterned floors towards Oncology. Unfamiliar faces glanced up at his passage with only some as vaguely recognisable from past visits. Steve nodded as he passed.

Abraham Erskine's office was modest, as were all offices in Bellefeuille Hospital. Saving space for that which was more important, Abraham had said, and as Steve waited for extrapolation added a deliberate, "Patients, Steven. The patients."

He'd smirked at Steve at that, and it hadn't been mocking. Steve had smiled right back.

He paused outside the half-open door, rapping his knuckles on the thin wood beside the plaque depicting 'Dr Abraham Erskine'. There was a pause before a murmured, "Yes? Come in," rippled through the wood.

The office itself was as simple as they came. Like few men his age, Abraham had embraced the progression of technology and, while many of his aged colleagues maintained their use of paper copies and filing cabinets, Steve's uncle had reduced most of his own files to soft copies. The result was a soothing sparseness, a wide desk cluttered only with a computer and a minimal spread of files that would put many doctors to shame. The pair of simplistically comfortable chairs stationed across from the doctor's seat were empty, silent and expectantly waiting to be filled. No patients. No families of patients. The only disruption in the room was the soft, persistent ticking of the wall clock, the gentle flapping of the half-drawn venetian blinds in a non-existent breeze, the scratch of pen on paper.

Soft copy will out, but Abraham always did prefer to write than to type.

Steve's uncle glanced up immediately at Steve's entrance, and the carefully blank concentration of his expression eased into his usual gentle smile. He continued to write even as he straightened, gaze trained on Steve. "Steven," he said, warmth flooding his tone and emphasising his clipped accent. "Wonderful to see you."

"I hope this isn't a bad time," Steve said, stepping in the room.

"I would have told you if it were when you called this morning," Abraham said, and, pausing in his writing, he gestured to one of the seats across from him. "Please. Take a seat."

"If you're in the middle of something, I can come back later."

Abraham tilted his head forwards, peering over the rims of his spectacle. His smile widened slightly, growing just a little chiding. "Steven, are we going to have this conversation every instance you take the time to visit me?"

Steve found himself smiling in return. Abraham was right; they _did_ have just such an exchange. Steve hardly noticed he asked anymore – it had become simply habit to do so. Polite, even, for Abraham had his schedule, too.

He took the seat.

It was a mark of how much Abraham valued their occasional meetings that he actually put his pen down. Folding his hands before him, he leant forward just slightly, smiling complacently. For a moment they simply stared at one another, and Steve was free to watch him. To collate the features that he knew so well; the scratching of a grey beard, the lines around his kindly eyes, apparent even through his wide lenses, the hook of his nose and the heavy line of his brow. Steve had come to love Abraham in a way that logic told him was like a father figure but feeling just told him was affection. He knew Abraham felt at least a little the same way.

It was why it was so easy to talk to him. That they were similar, as focused and intent upon making the world a better place, of doing Good, as one another, was another reason. Steve loved Anna too, but he would never be as at ease with her as he was Abraham. She would never be able to distract him from thought of HYDRA – or more persistently, thoughts of Bucky – like Abraham did simply by being there.

Which he did. Even more so when, deep into their contemplative, silent exchange, Abraham's smile widened just slightly. "How have you been, Steven?" he said. And that was it. That was how it began. Just as it always did.

Steve told him. Or as much as he could tell him, anyway; SHIELD was a force secretive in nature, and even the name itself was only mentioned offhandedly without any available information of what it actually meant publically available. Just as HYDRA was; the entirety of the NYPD might be _involved_ in their missions, but no one was quite so wholly focused, so completely assigned, as was SHIELD.

Steve spoke, though. He spoke of how they'd made a breakthrough at work moments after Abraham told him that he thought he'd made a breakthrough in his latest research endeavour. When Steve spoke of Nat and Sam, of his friends and colleagues, Abraham followed the drifting flow into discussion of his own closest correspondent Dr Michaels and his latest intern who was very bright but, "A little bit slow in her work sometimes."

When Steve spoke in vague sentiment of his frustrations, however, Abraham didn't relate. Not immediately anyway.

Pausing with mouth slightly opened, he stared at Steve for a long moment. There was something clinical yet also somehow compassionate in that stare; Steve had never known anyone to wear the expression quite the way his uncle did. When he did speak it was slightly concernedly. "Are you alright, Steven?"

Steve, frowning absently and gazing vaguely over his uncle's shoulder, sharpened his focus once more. Though Abraham and their discussion had been a distraction for a time, it was _only_ for a time. These things couldn't last. Not at the moment. Still, Steve wouldn't admit to his internal struggle. He couldn't.

"Alright?" He blinked, tipping his head slightly. "Of course I'm alright."

"You look tired," Abraham said. He linked his fingers before him, rocking them slightly on the desktop. "Are you unwell?"

"I haven't been unwell for years," Steve said with a smile, for truly he hadn't. He wasn't sure how or why, but after his last ditch effort, after the utter low that he'd sunken to and after he'd clawed and scrambled his way through remission, Steve hadn't gotten sick. He couldn't even recall the last time he'd caught a cold. "You know that. The last time I was sick was –"

"That is not what I refer to," Abraham said, peering over the top of his spectacles once more. "You are looking tired."

"You already said that," Steve said, smiling. Or at least he hoped it was a smile. "So do you. Always."

"A different kind of tired."

"What does that mean, exactly? Is this a medical term that I'm unaware of? How may kinds of tired is a person capable of?"

Abraham didn't rise to the bait of Steve's heart-hearted teasing. He only stared at him from a moment longer before replying. "Tell me what troubles you, Steven."

If it had been Anna, Steve could have deflected her. He would have merely shrugged and professed how he'd spent one hour two many at the office and likely simply needed more sleep. If it had been Sam, Steve would have said he was frustrated about HYDRA – which he was. If it was Nat, he would have admitted how he had always been more of a practical than a theoretical person and the recent spike in paperwork was weighing him down – which it was.

Abraham was different, however, so Steve told him all of that. Shrugging, he dropped his gaze. "I'm just tired, I think. Not enough sleep is had by anyone at the office at the moment."

"And?" Abraham prompted.

Another shrug. "And we've had that breakthrough that I told you about. It's a whole heap of extra work, which I don't begrudge for a second, but it's tiring."

"And?"

"And I think we're all wearing at one another in the office. Tony's agitated and when Tony gets agitated he annoys everyone. Particularly Bruce. Wanda's been grumbling at everyone but Vision in Romanian – which is maybe just a little unfair but I can't comment on her methods of relieving her frustration – and Rhodie's been a little short with everyone." Steve shook his head, smiling ruefully. "He's never had time for foolishness."

"And?"

"And even Sam and Nat are feeling it, I think. Sam always swears a lot more when he's overtired, while Nat talks less but a lot more barbed. That tends to wear a little too at times. I suppose you could say it's… tiring."

"And?"

That was it. That was Abraham's contribution; a single word and Steve was all but prepared to tell him anything. No one could be quite as persuasive as Abraham and he didn't even seem to try. Steve almost felt like telling him everything. Almost, but…

"Abraham, do you remember Bucky?"

Steve was watching Abraham intently enough that he saw the minute lift in his uncle's eyebrows. It wasn't cautious as much as surprised. "James? Your school friend from –"

"Back from when we lived in Brooklyn, yes," Steve said. "Although he wasn't really my school friend. We didn't even go to the same school."

"You were close, though, I remember."

"We were." Steve nodded slowly. "He's my best friend."

Images darted across his mind, memories, as they had repeatedly over the past months with little reprieve. A smiling boy, so bright. The feel of a comforting hand squeezing his shoulder. A flat, dark gaze, unwavering in a pale face beneath the glowing streetlamp. Steve blinked and they withdrew, not gone but pushed briefly below the surface.

"I do remember him," Abraham said. "Why do you ask? Have you heard from him?"

Abraham knew everything. He and Anna both, though while Anna's reaction to Steve's comprehension, his suppositions of Bucky's home life and his disappearance, had been all gasps and horror, regret and self-reprimand for not seeing because, "How didn't I notice something so horrible?" Abraham was quieter. More detached. Clinical, even. He had always been better able to remove himself from the emotion of a scene than Steve.

Abraham knew of Bucky's family. He knew of his father, that his mother had disappeared. It was Abraham who had looked into the system and helped Steve to search for any word of him as Steve wouldn't have been able to manage on his own. He discovered Bucky's mother and younger sister had moved south to Florida. He was the one who uncovered the fact that Bucky had dropped out of school in a manner that was more 'disappearing' than simply skipping.

He was the one who deduced that Bucky had disappeared entirely. With only one exception, it had been the worst moment of Steve's life to hear his uncle state that fact.

Abraham would know how much it meant to Steve had he been able to find Bucky again. To know that he was okay, that he was alive, that he was safe and doing well. It probably would have meant something to Abraham personally, for that matter; he'd always claimed he liked Bucky, too. Steve would have liked to admit it, at least to someone. The weight of Bucky's appearance, oh-so-brief and possibly as much an apparition as the real thing, might have been eased just slightly.

But Steve only shook his head. Not now. Maybe not ever. "No," he said lowly. "I haven't heard from him."

"But?"

"But I've just been thinking about him. A lot lately, actually."

"And why is that?"

It was Abraham's doctor's voice that he spoke with now. All clinical, all professional, but with that touch of personal investment that so many doctors lacked. When Steve lifted his gaze to meet his uncles, it was to see genuine care welling within his eyes. _I wish I could tell you,_ he thought, but instead: "I don't know," he said. "I guess just… thinking."

Abraham stared at him for a long moment. He was prone to those – long moments of thoughtfulness. Steve had been the subject of them for so long that he was more than used to them by now. "You were always close when he still lived nearby. His disappearance changed you."

"Changed me?" Steve frowned. He hadn't heard this before. "What do you mean?"

"You grew different when he left, Steven," Abraham said, and raising his hands, propping his elbows onto the table, he lowered his chin atop his fingers. "It was not immediate, but I noticed. I believe Anna did as well, though she did not say it. You never really had friends going through school after that."

"I never had friends before Bucky left, either," Steve pointed out.

"You did not become embroiled in fights before."

"Call it testosterone. Puberty. Any or all of that."

Abraham's lips curled slightly in a smile that faded just as quickly. "You became more studious, more closed from the world. More focused – upon completing your studies, attending your academy, all of that. Upon changing the world for the better."

"And that's a bad thing," Steve asked, more curious than disgruntled by his uncle's words.

Abraham shook his head. "Not necessarily, but that the more you withdrew from the world and lost yourself in focus, the less affection you gave yourself. I believe that Bucky grounded you from that in many ways."

"Affection?" Steve echoed. He felt almost like a boy again before the incomprehensible words of a teacher. "Affection given to myself? What does that mean, exactly?"

"Caring for yourself. _You_ time."

Steve found himself smiling then. "Me time? I spend a lot of me time on just me, Abraham."

"I do not think you do."

"My work is exactly how I want to spend my time." Then Steve raised an eyebrow pointedly towards his uncle. "And you're one to talk. Anna always used to tell me about how you would go for days at work until she sometimes had to come to the hospital and drag you home."

"And drag she did," Abraham said with a fond smile. "Anna grounded me, too."

Steve stared at his uncle. The implications of that simple statement were almost too great to comprehend. _Were_ too great, and heart-aching for the years it had been since Steve _had_ seen his best friend.

Still his best friend, he realised, for despite Sam, despite Nat and Tony and Clint and everyone else in the office – despite the fact that Bucky had thrown a knife at him, he still was. Somehow, he still was.

It was only when Steve felt Abraham's hand fall onto his shoulder that he consciously registered that his uncle had moved. Usually, he was as attentive to his surroundings as the Captain Tony nicknamed him after, and yet when he was in Abraham's office he seemed to lose himself. Just a little, and just for a time, but he did.

Steve drew his gaze to when Abraham had moved to stand beside him. He wasn't a tall man but seated as Steve was he still had to look up. His uncle smiled gently when he did. "Make sure to care for yourself too, Steven. You do good things as you are, and you would make your mother proud, I am sure. But when we look to the past it is often because we are dissatisfied with the present. No?"

Steve had never thought of it quite like that before, but as he left his uncle's office it was with such thoughts churning through his mind. He barely noticed the passing nurses and patients alike as he made his way unconsciously towards the exit.

The streets were crowded around midday, and despite the depths of his introspection, Steve felt himself drawn to the present as soon as he stepped into their midst. The press of bodies, the buzz of indecipherable, inane chatter, the unsteady navigation to sporadic steps and lurching figures, was somehow starkly Other to what he usually experienced. Steve had to smile at himself in self-deprecation; he'd definitely spent far too much time in the office if the reality of public thoroughfares had become so alien to him. Shaking his head and dodging a woman that strode towards him to avoid being ploughed through, he turned back towards the station. Maybe he could catch a quick lunch on the way; he hadn't realised how long he'd been in Abraham's office until he left, but the sun was already glaring from overhead.

What happened on his trip could have been a coincidence. It could have been, but Steve didn't truly believe in coincidences. He didn't know how it happened if it wasn't, but it couldn't have been.

It wasn't a mere twist of the strings of fate that had him seeing Bucky across the street.

For a moment, Steve couldn't even understand what he was seeing. Not intellectually, anyway. His body knew, though. His feet knew as they paused in step, his eyes as they locked upon Bucky and widened. He barely noticed as a businessman scraped past him, shooting him a scowl before turning back to his phone conversation. For once, impoliteness wasn't of concern to Steve.

Then his brain caught up with his body and he was throwing himself across the road. Nat would shake her head solemnly for his jaywalking, but for once Steve didn't care.

He couldn't look away.

As he ran, Steve marvelled. He didn't even know how he knew it was Bucky, for from a distance he could have been just about anyone. Tall, broad, he was dressed apart from half of the pedestrians around him in their suits and polished shoes and embraced instead the other half in casual jeans and a jacket just a little too warm for the season. He wore gloves too, but Steve barely had the presence of mind to question the fact. Overlong hair pulled back to the nape of his neck and sunglasses atop his nose should have made him indiscernible.

But Steve knew him. He didn't know how, but he did. He barely heard the honk of a car's horn as he darted across the road, the yelp of a passer-by he nearly crashed into as he leaped up the curb on the opposite sidewalk. He couldn't take his eyes off where Bucky stood against a wall alongside a coffee shop with the simplistic name _Café Bianco._ One foot propped against the wall, he held a phone to his ear and seemed entirely distracted by whoever he was talking to.

Maybe that was why Steve could get so close. Maybe that was why Bucky didn't run away as the image in Steve's head of the blank-faced man, of a fighter with a knife and cold eyes, briefly conjured itself. He couldn't rationalise it with the Bucky he saw at that moment. _This_ Bucky seemed too human and too _here_.

Bucky did notice him. As Steve drew closer, running and dodging and unable to blink for fear he would disappear, Bucky saw him notice. And then, maybe it was the chair he stumbled across at the café that gave him away. Or maybe it was the startled half-shout of "Sorry!" from a girl he nearly toppled over. Maybe it was just the feeling of being watched and rapidly approached that attracted Bucky's gaze. Steve knew that feeling only too well.

He knew it just as he knew from a distant, painful memory exactly what degree of surprise Bucky felt when he slowly lowered his phone, flipped his sunglasses upwards and raised his eyebrows alongside them.

 _Bucky. It's really… it really is Bucky_.

It seemed impossible, and Steve couldn't slow or look away for the chance that it was.

The notion that the Bucky he'd seen months before had been an apparition was reinforced in that moment because _this_ – this was more like the Bucky that Steve knew. Not smiling, but not cold and expressionless, either. The Bucky he'd first met as a boy, smiling and laughing and swinging sick little Michael into the air with peals of verbalised joy. It was _that_ Bucky, and as Steve approached him, drew alongside him, stood before him and beheld the surprised openness in Bucky's raised eyebrows and the slight parting of his lips, every memory that had been assaulting him for weeks attacked all at once.

 _This is my Bucky_.

"Fuck," was Bucky's first word, loud enough to be heard over the traffic and the pedestrians and even the rapid thumping of Steve's heartbeat in his ears. "Little Stevie Rogers. Fuck, but you've grown."

Steve knew that. He knew it even more when he stood alongside Bucky. He knew it when Nat used her exaggerated 'statue' references, or when Sam prodded his arm with his dubiously raised eyebrow. Steve was tall, at least as tall as Bucky, and he'd made a point of becoming as far removed from the helpless, feeble child he'd been. There was a certain sense of satisfaction to be had from simply being strong, to being able to haul a weight over his head, to be able to run for miles and miles without stopping. Steve knew only too well what if felt like to lack that capability; he wouldn't overlook it ever.

For that moment, in that instant, that he _had_ changed and just how much was made starkly apparent. Because Steve _was_ as tall as Bucky, as he had only just managed in the past, and at least as broad. He could meet his eyes and feel more than the diminutive counterpart to his best friend. It was almost enough to make him self-conscious, and Steve might have been at any other moment as Bucky's gaze that drew appraisingly from his toes to his face.

But not then. Not right then. Bucky's eyebrows were still raised, as if he truly hadn't seen Steve in years. As if their momentary meeting of three months before hadn't happened at all.

Maybe it hadn't.

"Bucky," Steve said, and he took another step towards him as Bucky straightened from his lean against the wall. "It really is you, isn't it?"

Impossible. Coincidental. It shouldn't have been, and yet it was. How was it -?

"It's been a while," Bucky said. He shook his head slightly, slowly. "Hell, it's been a while."

"Fourteen years," Steve said. _And five months, two weeks and six days,_ he didn't add. Steve knew. He knew because he'd committed that date to memory exactly. "It's been –"

"Fourteen years?" Bucky said, eyebrows rising once more. "No shit, really?"

"You don't remember," Steve said slowly, and he couldn't think straight enough to discern how he felt about that.

The faintest of quirks that Steve couldn't decide was a smile or not touched the corners of Bucky's lips. "Don't take it personally, Steve. Half of the time I can't even remember how old I am."

"You're twenty-nine," Steve said instinctively. "Nearly thirty."

"Am I really? Practically an old man, then, aren't I?"

"Are you calling me old too? I'm only a year younger than you."

"Yeah, well, maybe you're old as well. Don't look it though because damn, Steve."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Do you lift?"

"Lift what?"

"Cabbages, you moron, what do you think I'm talking about? You're a gym junkie, I'll bet."

It was so strange. Somewhere though the grogginess of Steve's thoughts, he registered that it was _so strange_. That he was talking to Bucky, that Bucky was here after disappearing for so long, and that it was so easy. It almost felt like he hadn't been gone at all. This was the Bucky who had laughed so infectiously that Steve couldn't help but join in, even when he was at his lowest. The Bucky who had dragged Steve along to the local McDonalds after school because Anna had never approved of fast-food vendors but according to Bucky, every teenage boy was supposed to subsist on greasy fries. The Bucky who, when they _should_ have been doing homework, was instead whispering stupid and terribly lame jokes into Steve's ear that left them both sniggering rather than studying.

And yet at the same time it was somehow the quiet Bucky. The deep-thinking and sombre Bucky. Maybe even a little bit of the drunk Bucky too that Steve had only met the once and _shouldn't have left_.

"You're an idiot," Steve found himself saying in the same moment that he realised he was smiling. Actually smiling, and it felt like an entirely different kind of smile to his usual. Old. Worn. Comfortable, even untouched for years. "And you're one to talk."

"What, like what you see, then?" Bucky said, and the subtle shift of his stance was so practiced that Steve almost didn't notice it at all. That was familiar, too, though somehow entirely different to the posturing of his youth. Like a prancing colt would differ to a rearing stallion.

At the sight of it, a gesture likely meant to be nothing more than a jest, Steve felt himself thrust back into the moment. Suddenly, an upwelling of urgent questions nearly overwhelmed him as they smothered his smile. Taking a final step towards Bucky, close enough that he could touched him had he reached, Steve felt that urgency blurt out in a torrent of words. "It's really you. I can't believe it. Where've you been, Buck? I had absolutely no idea where you went all those years ago, but where…? I don't even know where to start, I have so many questions."

Bucky's posturing slipped fluidly away and he stood in the casually graceful, wide-legged stance of one who knew how to carry himself again. Steve would likely have been staring – or staring more – if not for his persisting urgency. That and the fact that, for all of the casualness of his stance, there was something not quite right about Bucky's posturing. A falseness. A not-quite-right.

"Riddled with questions, Steve?" Bucky asked, the twitch at the corners of his lips definitely more of a smirk this time. "Watch it or you'll overwhelm a guy."

"Are you okay? With what happened? With what -?" Memories rushed forth again, of that day, that night, the text message of the following morning. How it had broken something inside Steve that he hadn't even known existed to break. It abruptly felt like far less than a whole fourteen years, five months and three weeks. "Where did you go? What even happened to you?"

The lasting dregs of Bucky's incredulity faded from his face into smooth composure. Not quite blankness, but Steve didn't like the sight of it regardless. It was more falseness. It didn't feel like _Bucky_. "You sure ask a lot of questions. That was a whole decade ago, Steve."

"Of course I've got questions. You disappeared, Bucky."

"You disappeared first."

For the brief moments before those words, Steve considered that maybe Bucky didn't even really remember. That maybe it really had been too long and only Steve existed to stand testimony to the fact that that night had happened at all. But Bucky was blinking slowly, staring pointedly, and he _knew_.

Steve swallowed. "Only for a second. You disappeared for good."

Bucky shrugged a shoulder. The gesture was entirely blasé. "Yeah, well. It was that or live in a shithole."

"You could have come to me."

"No I couldn't."

"You could have –"

"No. I couldn't." And suddenly even the blankness of Bucky's expression hardened into something more. "I couldn't have done that, Steve."

It wasn't the right place for such a discussion. Maybe there would never have been a right place, but that one felt even more wrong than anywhere else. The sun was too warm and bright, the chatter around them too merry and the endless traffic too incessant. A silent room, a silent house, the ticking of a clock the only mark of passing time, would have been more suitable. Steve almost longed for that. He longed to be away, somewhere with Bucky, to ask him questions and to _understand_.

"Bucky, please," he found himself saying, and he heard the edge of desperation in his own words. "I need to talk to you."

Bucky shook his head. "That might not be such a good idea, Steve."

"Just for a few minutes. Just to understand."

A click of his tongue didn't ease the hardness of Bucky's expression even slightly. "Not too sure how much understanding there'll be."

"I can try. Please, I can –"

"We're hiking pretty different walks of life, Steve," Bucky interrupted him. "I don't know how much 'talking' with you would be a good idea. You might not like what you hear."

Steve had a moment, then. A brief moment in which he recalled the pivotal memory he'd all but forgotten. Of a dark night by the docks. Gunshots sounding, a figure in black, the flash of a blade and the utter shock in his own voice as he blurted out his best friend's name.

He remembered, then.

He remembered, and as that memory rose to the surface, he saw from the slight cock of Bucky's head that he was remembering too.

Then the moment was shattered. A crash sounded from somewhere – the café, maybe – and then a horn blared. Steve glanced instinctively over his shoulder towards a sleek black car that swung into the curb, pulling up in a grunt of momentary pause. A Lexus, Steve registered. A GS if he knew anything about cars. Another car tooted indignantly behind it but the black beast ignored the protest.

"That's my ride."

Steve whipped his head back towards Bucky, just in time to jerk backwards slightly as Bucky stepped closer. Too close, almost – or not close enough, Steve wasn't sure. "I'll see you round, Stevie," he said, voice lowered but audible at such proximity. "Or not. Hopefully not." Then, before Steve could reply, he was rendered speechless by the press of lips briefly, warmly, firmly against his cheek. The murmur of parting words whispered into Steve's ears.

Stunned. Stunned was a good word to describe how Steve felt. It was about the only word he could formulate in his mind.

Then Bucky was gone. In a breeze of motion, he was sliding past Steve and striding towards the car. A heartbeat, he was across the footpath, fingers flicking his sunglasses back into place. In another he was through the door of the car. Only the echo of his lips on Steve's cheek remained as the car slithered its way back into the fold of traffic. An echo, and those final whispered words.

 _"I wasn't sure it was you. My bad about the knife_."

Bucky knew. He remembered, and not just the long-ago past they'd shared. In those words, Steve had confirmation of perhaps the worst fact he could contemplate.

Bucky was of HYDRA.


	4. Chapter 4

Typically, the change rooms at Central NYPD were gender specific. Nat called it excessive and unnecessary. Sam said it was a waste of space because the women on the force tended to use the men's change rooms more than the women's anyway.

"Why shouldn't we?" Nat always said. "The men's is bigger."

"And it tends to be left in such a state at the end of the day that the cleaners have to actually clean it regularly," Clint would dutifully add.

"Precisely," Nat wrapped up, ceasing the non-argument with absolutely no one.

Men didn't use the women's, however. It wasn't because it wasn't cleaned as often, though it usually wasn't. It wasn't because it was smaller either, though it was. The simple fact of the matter was that it just… didn't happen.

Not typically, anyway. When Steve went in search of Wanda that evening, however, he took a moment to look inside. She'd been gone for over an hour and someone had to check. Nat said he should be the one to do it and Steve didn't mind. He would have done it even if she hadn't asked.

She was there, of course. Sitting on one of the polished wooden benches, dressed in thick grey Kevlar, heavy belt and sturdy boots. Her hair was pinned severely from her face in a way opposite to how she usually loosely styled it. She was staring at her knees when Steve entered but glanced up as he leant against the doorframe just inside the room.

Folding his arms across his chest, Steve met her gaze with a gentle smile. "How're you holding up?" he asked quietly.

Wanda stared at him for a moment, lips pursed just slightly. Her expression was blank for nearly a whole minute – Steve counted – before she loosed a heavy sigh. Her shoulders seemed to sag slightly. "The usual," she muttered. "I do not do well in such operations."

Rather than her words, the thickness of Wanda's accent was telling of just how nervous she was. Whenever she grew discomforted, Wanda would always drift more closely towards her Romanian tongue. She hadn't been to her home country in years, Steve knew, but it was an unshakeable and instinctive comfort to her.

"I can't say I really agree with that," Steve said, shaking his head slowly, "but you can pull out if you'd like. It's not too late, even if we do have to revise on the spot. You don't have to come."

Wanda frowned just slightly, but Steve suspected it was more directed to herself than to him. "Of course I am coming. This is an important mission, Steve. The biggest yet. Of _course_ I am coming."

She was right in that regard. It _was_ an important mission. Perhaps the most important that Loki had fed them in the whole three and a half months since his double-playing had arisen. So big, in fact, that not only were SHIELD and the Asgard Squad called to attention but nearly a dozen additional officers of the force, too. It wasn't the first time Steve and his team had to call upon such support over the past months, but it was the first time they'd required so many.

This was big. Bigger than big. A nest of HYDRA embedded in plain sight where SHIELD hadn't even noticed it, and the club was allegedly hosting not only a plethora of HYDRA snakes that night but a smattering of their associates as well. This was a big deal. A very big deal. If they could ever use the addition of an extra pair of hands – of _Wanda's_ hands, more than capable as they were – it was tonight.

Still, if she wasn't comfortable with it, Steve wouldn't push her. He never would.

"It is important," Steve said with a nod. "But if you're not up for it, no one would think any less of you."

"I would," Wanda said shortly, gaze dropping to her knees.

"A trauma-induced flinch response is nothing to be ashamed of, Wanda," Steve said, because he like everyone else in SHIELD knew of Wanda's circumstances.

Wanda nodded shortly, just the once. "I know. I am hardly the only one to have such a difficulty. We all know about Tony."

"And Rhodie," Steve said, who was similarly more than aware of his colleagues' particular struggles. In the case of Rhodie, he'd always had his own instinctive urge to withdraw when any blow came hurtling towards his knees. Past trauma did that to a person, and while everyone in SHIELD knew about it, no one thought any less of him for it.

"And Clint," Wanda continued with a nod. "His hearing."

"And Nat has issues with body covering."

"If you mean issues such as slamming anyone to the ground who mentions wearing a bikini, I think we are considering different kind of trauma," Wanda said pointedly. Then she gave a small smile.

Steve smiled in return. She was right about that at least. He nodded. "Maybe, but it's still kind of the same. Everyone has their ticks. The things that make them snap or just stop."

"Even you?" Wanda asked, and though she'd asked before, her expression was as curious as it had been the first time.

"Even me," Steve said. He didn't know why Wanda seemed so surprised by that fact. He was hardly the paragon of stoicism, despite the way Tony always called him 'Captain' like he thought so, or Vision would objectively and simplistically claim that, "Steve is nothing if not the most tenacious of our number. Every one of us knows it."

Tenacious? Steve liked to think himself so but he wasn't sure how correct Vision was in assuming as much. But he supposed… Steve supposed that maybe, when it came to his own tick, he was. Goodness. Rightness. The words that he'd learned, truly learned, from his mom and had committed as lore. And more than that…

Justice.

Everyone on SHIELD possessed that tick, but in Steve it felt as if a switch had been flicked. When a right was wronged, a goodness turned bad or injustice served, he couldn't help himself. It had to be fixed, to be reversed or erased. There was no other option and that was how it should be. How Steve had always known it should be. How, until recently, he'd believed was the only way it _could_ be.

"We all have our quirks," Steve found himself saying, and only the sound of his own voice drew him back from his consideration.

Wanda watched him thoughtfully, and Steve was momentarily drawn from the dregs of his thoughts to feel mildly pleased. She was frowning slightly, but more in contemplation then concern. Her head cocked as she regarded him. "I do not manage well with firearms."

"I know you don't," Steve said. They all knew she didn't.

"Have you ever had a recurring memory, a memory so vivid that you cannot stop seeing it should the reminder arise?" Wanda closed her eyes. "I cannot stop seeing it sometimes. I fear that I might be deemed… incapable, should I be proved to flinch too greatly."

"I know," Steve said quietly, because he _did_ know. He knew that uncertainty, that lack of confidence in himself. He'd held that lacking for years throughout the illness of his childhood. Beyond that, even. Sometimes he still felt it.

"I cannot help but remember what happened to him."

"I know," Steve repeated. Then he stepped more fully into the change room, his own heavy boots clicking on the tiled floors. "It's incredible that you chose to join the force at all."

"How could I not?" Wanda said, and she opened her eyes to peer up at him as he approached. "It would be a disservice to my brother and his death should I not seek justice against those who would act in a similarly unjust manner."

Wanda was like him in many ways, Steve knew. She sought the same Goodness and Rightness, if for slightly different reasons. Maybe it was for that reason he felt so fond of her.

"There's nothing wrong with being afflicted by a recurring memory, Wanda," Steve said, and he dropped a hand to her shoulder. She glanced at it briefly but didn't shrug it off. "Nothing wrong at all."

"Does it happen to you, then?" She asked. "Is that perhaps another of your ticks?"

Steve paused before replying. Another one. Memories. His ticks… He supposed she was right in that. Especially recently because recently Steve had indeed been afflicted with memories. So many memories that sometimes he almost couldn't function. So many facets of his childhood and all of them involving Bucky. Laughing, joking, talking quietly, sitting silently. Crying, in Steve's case but only twice. Only twice.

The night at Dogend. The fight. The knife and the blank stare.

Then the sight of him in the sun, in glasses and jeans and comfortably casual as the polar opposite of the human weapon holding a knife.

And the kiss. Always back to the kiss.

Maybe that shouldn't have stood out to Steve. Maybe he shouldn't have recalled it again and again, with each rendition adding more and more emphasis to it. Steve had dated before. He'd had a girlfriend in school. He'd had a boyfriend when he came out of the police academy, and those months had firmly grounded him in his sexuality. A kiss shouldn't contain so much and definitely not a brief, passing kiss to the cheek.

And yet it did. It did so much. That memory recurred again and again and…

And Steve had to see Bucky. To talk to him. To _be_ with him, because talking even briefly, standing beside him so shortly, had made it less of a want and more of a need. Years – fourteen years and counting – didn't erase that fact. If anything, the time apart only made it stronger. Bucky was still Steve's Bucky, after all this time.

Even if he was a part of HYDRA. Somehow, even then.

"I guess you could say that," Steve said finally, and his voice was so quiet that he barely heard it. "Yes, you could say I…"

Wanda peered up at him curiously, and it was the youth, the openness and the question in her face that drew Steve back from his thoughts. She wasn't _that_ young, and she was far from innocent – her skills as utilised by SHIELD proved that – but she always felt like it. Like the child of their group. It sometimes took watching her viciously pummel the absence of life out of a speed bag to be made aware that she was more than capable of handling herself. Clint, her self-appointed teacher, had trained her well.

Before Steve could speak, could continue to reassure or explain or admit, he wasn't sure which, he felt his phone quiver in his pocket. Glancing downward, breaking the moment he and Wanda ponderously shared, he plucked it free.

 _Nat? Not Nat. Fury._ Steve pressed the phone to his ear. "Yes?"

 _"Times ticking, Cap,"_ he said, as always using Tony's dubbed nicknames. Steve had never understood why he did that. _"You and the Witch ready?"_

Steve spared a glance down to where Wanda still sat before him. In silent reply to his unasked question, she rose to her feet, nodding shortly. Steve nodded in turn. "Yeah. We're ready."

_"Then let's get a move on, Princesses. We can't keep these HYDRA bastards waiting."_

Steve couldn't agree more. He certainly wouldn't keep them waiting. As always, as on every single operation, when Steve left the change room alongside Wanda it was to a mixture of consideration: did he want Bucky to be there? Or did he want him to be as far away from the club as possible?

* * *

Red Room was a deceptive club. Sleekly minimalistic, it might have even passed as an upstanding business in broad daylight. At night, however, the winding trail of scantily-clad figures, the thrum of the bass within and the ruddy glow of feeble light that managed to filter onto the curb bespoke the nature of the establishment.

That and the bouncers that resembled grizzly bears more than humans. The twitchy, sidelong glances of the clientele only enhanced the effect.

When Steve managed to make his way inside, the general ambiance redoubled the impression. There was something about the _feeling_ of an approaching crime scene. Something about the casual slouching of unmarked criminals as they drank and snorted trails of white off sticky tables, the languid and drunken swaying and arm-waving of the oblivious dancers, the darkly clad men and women that pervaded the scene in hawk-eyed attentiveness and somehow seemed to sink into the shadows between the strobe lights…

There was something about it. Maybe it was simply because Steve already knew who they were, _what_ they were, but he fathomed he could smell it through the cloying aroma of sweat and debauchery. He didn't think many were unduly surprised when the club erupted into chaos, either. There were screams, but they weren't _surprised_ screams.

All had been going according to plan. All of it, from the infiltration to the identification of targets that Steve knew by aliases and little else. He'd swept around the circumference of the thudding room, segregated the relatively innocent from the HYDRA members and the potential snakes from the definite. He'd even made it to the bar and ordered a drink that he wouldn't taste, the thudding in his chest more a product of the overloud music, the cloying scent just short of nauseating and the epileptic flashing of overhead lights blinding.

 _"Wonderful place they've got here,"_ Tony said, and he didn't seem to be even attempting to keep his voice down.

 _"Did you expect anything less?"_ Nat replied.

_"Well, criminals can't always be lacking in class, can they? There must be some with a modicum of good taste."_

_"I believe taste is an objectively based opinion, Mr Stark,"_ Vision said.

 _"You haven't seen the place, Vis. You wouldn't be saying that otherwise._ "

Vision didn't reply to that. Of their number, only a handful of SHIELD and even less of the Asgard Squad and NYPD reinforcement infiltrated the club itself. Apparently even in the Red Room there was a certain clientele chosen to be admitted through the doors. Tony was wrong on that count, at least; apparently criminals did have standards in some regards.

Why Steve had been chosen to be admitted was something that he acknowledged but had never really understood. Nat and Wanda too, and Tony. Sam had resisted insistently with the exclamation that, "I'm not pretty enough for this kind of shit."

"You calling me pretty, Falcon?" Tony had said. He grinned at Sam as Sam rolled his eyes. "I never knew you cared."

"If there was ever a time to use feminine charms…" Nat said, trailing of with a deathly mild stare around their van of officers that dared any of them to expand upon her words. Wanda was the only one who so much as twitched. Her smirk was thoroughly amused.

Steve put his back to the wall, nursing his beer and raising it periodically to his lips in show rather than drink. He kept up his constant scan the whole while as words drifted into his ears. They were waiting, waiting, holding until the official headcount could be made. According to Loki, someone named Jen Marco was set to arrive at oh-one-hundred hours on the dot. A HYDRA rep with glorious credentials, if Thor's transmission of the intel held any merit. Steve watched with measured boredom and detachedness as the room undulated before him. Watched. Waited. Listened.

 _"It's stinking hot in here,"_ Tony said.

 _"Aren't you the one who spends half their life in clubs, Stark?"_ one of the officers on standby asked.

_"I think you're getting that confused with work."_

_"You only spend_ half _your life at work? Stingy bastard…"_

Steve's heartbeat hitched in time with the bass. He could feel it rumble through his feet, the sound pounding through his chest likely only muffled by his Kevlar vest beneath the thick leather jacket shrugged over the top.

 _"I have eyes on Zhan,"_ Nat said.

 _"And I on that Chi-Chi bitch,"_ Sif said a moment later.

 _"I believe you're referring to Chiara,"_ a voice corrected. Another officer. Steve wasn't familiar enough with them to identify them through the surrounding noise and transmission distortion.

 _"Are you telling me how to do my job?"_ Sif retorted.

A burst of sound drew Steve's attention to the bar, a cry overloud, but it was only laughter. A woman in what appeared to be little more than a tea towel was perched on the edge of the counter, she and the man pressed between her legs entirely ignoring the resigned bartender who only half-heartedly attempted to shoo them off.

 _"That's Peckley,"_ an officer murmured. _"I'm almost certain of it."_

 _"How certain is certain?"_ Clint asked.

_"Pretty certain."_

" _Loki claims that Peckley is Marco's precursor,"_ Thor said, and there was something like proud arrogance in his tone. He seemed unable to think any less of Loki for his involvement in HYDRA, a fact that Steve knew he wouldn't have abided barely a year ago.

 _"Well, we'll all accept Loki's word on the matter,"_ someone said.

_"Watch yourself."_

_"Everyone in position?"_

_"For the third time, yes."_

_"Eyes on the entrance. Incoming party."_

Steve fought the urge to tense. His eyes flickered with more than just the blinding red and white lighting. The beer felt warm in his hand rather than chilled as he knew it was.

_"My count at… six… seven… nine."_

_"Incredibly accurate."_

_"Thank you."_

_"It's Marco?"_

_"As far as I can tell."_

_"Ready on the countdown."_

_"Stark, in position?"_

_"I was born in position. And call me Iron Man, please."_

_"Maximoff?"_

_"Ready."_

_"We'll pin these snakes. This time we will."_

_"Won't see what's coming."_

_"Will you stop?"_

_"Eyes, Rogers?"_

"You shouldn't have come tonight, Steve. Bad move."

Steve flinched. For all of a heartbeat, a microsecond, the voice was unrecognisable. Not in the earpiece. Not in his mind, even, as memory had conjured it countless times. It was –

He snapped his gaze sideways. Wide eyes swung to the sea of clientele, the dancers that spawned before him, the party-goers that stumbled around him. Jumping from dark head to dark head, shoulders to waving hands to… to…

"Bucky," he found himself say, at once as desperate as it was a demand. He didn't care that his voice was likely heard by his team. Steve couldn't see him, not even a hint of someone who looked like him as he twisted in place, but Bucky was… he was…

He was right. Bucky was right, because after that, it all went to hell.

Maybe HYDRA had known about Loki's lead. Maybe they'd even fed it to him, or he'd handed them the deception wittingly. Or maybe they'd simply perceived that the solo individuals slipping through the club, those that didn't really dance and didn't really drink and pretended not to watch, weren't the oblivious drunkards and clientele that populated the glaringly red dance floor.

For whatever reason, they knew. And despite those oblivious attendants, seconds after Steve pushed himself off the wall and before he could do more than utter, "Something's wrong -" the room exploded.

A shot ripped through the air.

A scream – one, two, a sea of screams – erupted.

A shout of, "Out, everybody out _now_!" bellowed over it all. Another shot chased the words.

And then, as that sea of bodies stumbled and tripped in every which way, struggling for the exits, HYDRA slithered forth.

Or Steve thought it was HYRDA. He couldn't be certain. It was impossible to be certain that they _all_ were, for he barely had time to think. Someone flew at him, and Steve had the split second to distinguish 'attacker' from 'bystander' before he was ducking, dodging, rising with a swing and a sharp, hooking blow. His forearm caught the attacker's neck. A gasping choke was felt more than heard. They went down.

Gunshots shot.

Screamers screamed.

Demands rung forth and another figure leaped at Steve through the midst of roiling bodies.

He lost himself in the moment. The operation wasn't going according to plan, but then Steve had always been a doer more than a planner. His body reacted instinctively, the hours spent in the gym and sparring against Nat and Sam and Tony and anyone else who challenged him dragged forth. He shook off a glancing blow to the head and took down another figure. He drew alongside Wanda and ducked as she swung a roundhouse kick over his head. A figure – a snake – toppled to the ground and then Steve was up and punching, kicking, striking out.

Gunshots fired.

Screamers fled.

In minutes that lasted hours, the Red Room cleared. Steve was left to dart between felled snakes, felled _victims_ , and peering at faces and barely acknowledge the 'not Bucky' before leaping to the next one.

 _"They're making a break for it,"_ a voice snapped sharply in his ear. _"A whole pit of snakes."_

_"We've got a horde heading east. Marco lookalike among them."_

_"All hands on deck. We've got a south-bound, vehicles approaching –"_

_"Eastbound armed, they're –"_

_" – need everyone out, now. All officers to hand!"_

With a growl, Steve pushed himself away from the last figure he'd knelt alongside. The last Not Bucky. He rose at a leaped and, barely acknowledging Wanda, Nat, Tony, two other officers that appeared at his side as – _uninjured, they appear uninjured_ – he started towards the door. "We're on our way," he said.

How quickly it had all turned to chaos.

Steve was angry. Furious, even – with Loki, with the operation, with the fleeing members of HYDRA who had evaded their widely flung net once more. They'd known they were outnumbered, surely, so they'd done what any coward would do. They ran. They loosed shots in their wake and they ran.

For a moment, Steve was even angry with Bucky. Only a moment. A moment and then, _What if something happens to him?_ It didn't matter that Bucky was HYDRA. On some primal level, it didn't matter to Steve. It didn't even matter that somehow, _somehow_ , he'd thrown a knife at Steve when they'd met for the first time in fourteen years.

Spilling into the dark night, the night that wasn't quite cold and seemed warmer for the heat radiating from his skin, Steve didn't slow. The flood of clubbers stumbled and staggered in their break from the entrance. A bouncer bellowed sharply, waving his hands above him and – _no gun, he's not armed_ – it was apparent he wasn't a member of HYDRA. Or perhaps he was and was just so low-ranking that firearms weren't provided to him.

Steve didn't know. He didn't care. He was sprinting away from the entrance, from the bouncer, the clubbers, with barely a glance over his shoulder. The slap of footsteps alongside him spoke of his colleagues running in step.

"We'll head east," Steve said shortly. Arms pumping. Legs racing. The cement beneath his shoes was jarringly hard.

_"Do you request back-up, Rogers?"_

_"Shut up, Ernest,"_ someone snapped over the top of the anonymous speaker. Then to Steve, _"We'll send back-up your way, Captain."_

Steve nodded to himself. A single nod. Then he was putting his head down and running.

The streets weren't bare. Cars dotted the sidewalk, cabs puttered past, street-walkers stumbled drunkenly or laughingly into one another. Each of them leaped out of Steve's way as, leading the charge of his fellow SHIELD officers – were the other NYPD officers even still there? – he barely slowed enough to dodge around them. Unrequested, Vision's voice, his eyes that would be even then scanning the grid, directed him in his ear.

 _"You're approaching a corner, Steve. Take a left,"_ then, _"Two blocks down, take a right."_

Steve was detachedly aware of voices spurting similar directions into other ears. A group that sounded to be lead by Sif closed in upon the south-bound horde of escaping snakes. Of another voice, unfamiliar, directing clean up and quelling of witnesses. Another – Clint, Steve realised – was muttering to himself and only raised his voice as Nat demanded a curt, "What, Barton?"

 _"Rhodes, Wilson and I are on our way,"_ Clint replied shortly.

"We'll try not to finish up before you get here, then," Tony said from behind him.

Steve didn't speak. He had no contribution to the exchange and his mind was focused. Upon HYDRA and, more than that, not _just_ on HYDRA. _What if Bucky's with them?_

Steve wanted him to be. He wanted him to be there so he knew where Bucky was. So he could leap between him and any justified attacks that _would_ be justified because he was _HYDRA_. Yet at the same time Steve wanted Bucky away. Far away. Other side of the city away and to have never heard of HYDRA.

Too bad it wouldn't happen.

Steve was fast. Nat, Wanda, Tony – they were all fast. The additional officers were there too, Steve realised, when they leaped upon the escaping members of HYDRA. The road was empty of moving cars yet riddled with countless stationary vehicles, lined by buildings blank and bricked and split only by narrow crevasses between those buildings that boasted wide dustbins and stacks of crates. At the very centre of that road, Steve all but crashed into them. Not a vehicle – they hadn't time to climb into the vehicle that stood with doors open and engine guttering alongside them. Nearly, but not quite.

Three, five, seven. Ten all together, Steve counted, and at least half of them accomplished fighters. It was apparent from their sudden movement, their turn _towards_ Steve as he ploughed their way, arms rising with weapons, with fists, rather than staggering backwards in retreat towards the cars behind them. The streetlights overhead didn't quite illuminate the scene. The darkness wasn't quite penetrated enough to make out features.

It was enough to attack by, however. To strike. To suppress.

Steve struck.

It was a messy affair. With more instinct that deliberation, he swung his fist in a hook. He dropped into a grounded stance as he skidded to a stop. He ducked the swinging rise of a pistol before snapping his hands up in a block and batting his assailant's wrist so fiercely that the weapon sprung free. There was a barked cry – of anger or pain, it was uncertain – and then it didn't matter. The fight began.

Grunts sounded. A shout of "Leave, get out, now!" echoed off the tall walls of the surrounding buildings. The frantic skitter of feet on bitumen was an inelegant melody to the pounding of fists, the deafening snap of a gunshot, the smash of a body thrust into the nearest static car.

Steve heard the noises on an unconscious level. He saw the fight around him without really seeing them, was aware when Nat took down a figure a head taller than her with a flip that shouldn't have been possible but he knew very much was for her. He saw one of the other officers flipping backwards with a bellow from a backhanded strike, skidding and rolling across the road.

Steve saw the man in front of him. He saw the weapon. He slapped it free, grappled when it wasn't quite loosened, thrust a shoulder into his opponent's collarbone and ignored the sickening crack. He took the man down.

Then he spun to another one.

Sam arrived on the scene barely moments later. In a burst from above – he had a propensity for launching himself over vehicles – he dove into the fray, all swinging raised pistol and shouts of "Drop your weapons!" Clint chased on his tail, Rhodie a second later as Steve slammed an upswinging elbow into his opponent's chin. Then, in a flurry of confusion, of SHIELD racing the cars that couldn't quite be defended by their bodyguards, the tides turned. And Steve knew they would win.

Detached satisfaction, felt but unacknowledged, rose within him. A win. A victory. The triumph of the _right_ side. It welled, blossoming – until he saw Bucky.

He saw Sam first. Or more correctly, he saw Sam launch himself at one of HYDRA's bodyguards just as his foot connected with Tony's gut and sent him flying backwards. Sam, gun still in hand yet all but disregarded in favour of his fists, was upon Tony's attacker in an instant.

Except in the second that Steve spun towards the sound of Tony's barked curse, it wasn't just an attacker. How hadn't he noticed him before?

The street was dark. Indecipherable, even. The streetlamps did little good and the erratic jerks of dancing bodies between them should have skewed any line of sight. But Steve saw, and as his opponent, newly battered, sagged to the ground, he couldn't look away. From Bucky. From his Bucky.

He knew it was him in the instant he truly looked at him.

Bucky fought like a demon. Steve knew he was a good fighter himself – "A great fighter," Sam always said with a smirk. "Don't short-change yourself" – but there was something different to how Bucky moved. It was in his careless abandon. The way he seemed to ignore the slam of a Sam's fist that hooked up into his diaphragm but for a split second pause. It was in the slap of his fist that rose in sharp response and the twist of his body to evade another strike, to lurch aside in a way that was somehow fluid and deliberate, and to dart forwards once more.

Bucky's foot hooked around the back of Sam's knee and Sam stumbled. A slam to Sam's chest with a fist, another twist, and then Bucky was spinning with a reverse turning kick. It was fast. Incredibly fast. And it struck Sam a blow across his head that sent him sprawling.

Even that wouldn't have been quite so bad except that, as Sam fell, he instinctively raised his pistol. He shouldn't have done that.

He hit the ground.

He rolled to raise the pistol.

Bucky's foot snapped down and a perfunctory stomp with his heel.

It all happened so quickly that Steve barely had the chance to make towards them. Just as Sam loosed a swearing bellow, Tony appeared over Bucky's shoulder. Steve took one step – Tony was raising his fist. Steve took another – and that fist was falling. Fast. Vicious. Pummelling

Steve could swear he felt the crack of impact resound through his body as Bucky was struck down by the descending blow. He was all but flying across the distance between them in an instant; even the near trip over a felled body – was that an officer? – didn't slow him.

That moment was when the rest of the force arrived.

That was when the confusion intensified into even greater mayhem.

That was when the sea of bodies doubled in number and HYDRA's resistance caved like a paper house beneath a sun shower.

Escapees were dragged from their cars. Attackers and bodyguards were smothered, forced to their knees, hands dragged behind their heads and handcuffs snapped with determined finality. Voices cried demands and orders, relayed instructions and spoke into earpieces. Weapons were holstered, arms folded, satisfaction just beginning to seep through the keen sharpness of narrowed eyes and frowns lowered in concentration.

They'd won. They had _won_.

For Steve, he barely registered any of that. He was distracted, not by the confusion but by what he _had to do._ If anything, that confusion was a blessing. It made snatching away a criminal from the midst just that little bit more possible.

When he glanced over his shoulder, Steve saw all of it playing out from his hastily retreated position at the side of the road. He saw it as he spared another brief, hurried glance over his shoulder before dropping his gaze back to Bucky at his feet. His hands curled beneath Bucky as, just as he had in the frantic moments of the fight, he dragged him limply from the road towards the darkness of a doorstep. Towards the shadow of a crevasse between buildings. Towards the dark shape of a dustbin with lid propped half open.

Steve didn't know what he was doing. He'd acted instinctively as he had since the fight began because he had to. When on an operation, Steve was of narrow-minded focus. He moved more with reflex than intention, to get the job done as his body innately knew the best way to manage.

It was with that same instinct, those same reflexes, that he'd grabbed Bucky and dragged him from the scene. With a brief struggle, he hauled the entire limp weight of him from the ground and dumped him into the dustbin. The thud of impact was muffled but seemed too loud in Steve's ears.

It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't even wholly certain to prove successful. More than that, it was very much illegal. But Steve didn't care. He found he couldn't care – not when it was Bucky. Not when, if he didn't, it would mean Bucky would be apprehended. Despite it all, he was still his Bucky. His best friend. The friend who… who…

Steve was striding back to the scene of the fight with rapid steps, and it was with a sigh of relief that he slipped back into the midst of officers and SHIELD operatives. No one had noticed, he didn't think. He hoped. No one had noticed that he'd removed one of the primary players from the scene.

Breathing just a little heavily, Steve took himself to Sam's side. Sam, who stood with his broken fingers cradled in his other hand and scowled at the darting officers that swept around him. His frown became only more apparent when a burst of red and blue lights swung around the corner, announcing the arrival of police cars to the scene.

"Are you alright?" Steve asked.

Sam dragged his gaze from glaring at one of the kneeling HYDRA snakes. The man had his head bowed, his arms looped behind his head and bound. He could have been any of the similarly posed figures waiting with objectionable tension on the roadside. Sam was still glaring when he met Steve's gaze, though Steve knew it wasn't meant for him. "My fucking hand, Steve."

"Is it broken?"

"At least a finger or two." Sam cursed again, made to spit on the ground and then appeared to think better of it. He dropped his gaze to his fingers that did indeed look a little broken. "My shooting hand and everything. The fucking bastard."

For a flicker of a second, Steve felt guilty. Guilty that he'd swept Bucky from the scene – he almost, _almost_ glanced over his shoulder to the dustbin – when he'd injured Sam's hand. Sam was a master shooter in his own right; Tony had jokingly, yet with more than a little truth to his words, called him 'the Falcon' for the his sharpshooting abilities. Police officers, and officers of SHIELD too, resisted actually using their firearms unless absolutely necessary, but Sam still took pride in his abilities. Steve was sorry for his injury. He truly was.

And yet at the same time… _He was doing what he was told to_ , Steve thought, and though a sickening twist curled in his gut, his guilt withdrew. Bucky was a part of HYDRA, and though it was _wrong_ and _bad_ , it was his job. His role. Steve could no more blame him for his actions than he could blame Tony for smacking him over the head in return. The only thoughts Steve had to that matter were to hope that the impact hadn't been too hard.

He hadn't checked. He hadn't had time to check on Bucky's wellbeing. That worried Steve.

"We'll take you to the hospital," Steve said, nodding at Sam's words. "As soon as we get out of this place. First stop."

"Yeah, if that ever happens," Sam muttered. He drew his gaze back across the sea of officers and Steve followed his line of sight. Towards Tony where he leant upon the hood of one of the cars, and arm looped across his midsection in a way that could have been a casual slouch as much as it could be cradling broken ribs. Towards Nat where she stood with feet planted and face blank as she spoke to an officer with a clipboard. To Wanda perched beside Clint, Rhodie as he started in Tony's direction, and the countless other policemen weaving around one another in motions that likely had intention but looked to Steve's eyes simply like moving to move.

"They're like fucking dancing chickens," Sam muttered. "Man, I hate working with the mainstream."

Steve didn't voice his agreement even if he did silently commiserate.

His observation was interrupted only when Nat glanced his way. Briefly, expression still blank in the way it became when she was 'all work', she tipped her chin slightly towards Steve as she spoke. "Head count, Steve," she called, raising her voice over the inane chatter that surrounded them. "Upon arrival, I counted ten. Six armed convoy, four escorted. You?"

This was it. This was the moment. Steve knew it was wrong, wrong in a way that Steve _never_ let himself be wrong, but he did it anyway. Because of Bucky. Because it was necessary for Bucky. He shook his head, arms crossing over his chest. "Five armed. There was only five."

Nat's eyebrow twitched slightly. "Five?"

"Five."

She stared at him for a moment longer. Nat was perceptive, almost as perceptive as Clint sometimes, and Steve wouldn't put it past her seeing straight through him. But then she turned back to the officer with the clipboard and that was the end of that.

Blow dodged.

Bullet missed.

Steve couldn't quite breathe just yet but he felt a step closer to being able to do so. As he turned back to Sam, pretended to be as disgruntled yet quietly satisfied as he knew he should be for a violent operation completed with success, he could only long for the night to be over.

He had a dustbin to raid, after all.


	5. Chapter 5

The apartment block on Charleston Street, one of several in the region, was a modest, upstanding complex of buildings. Unremarkable, almost plain, they held just the right amount of detailing and colour to avoid bleakness. A wide driveway dribbled from the narrow road alongside and an orderly stack of parking lots stood silent and waiting before the rows of simplistic gardens that lined the smattering of doors.

Sam Wilson thought it was boring. Natasha Romanoff shrugged and deemed it functional and all that could be needed for an independent bachelor. Tony Stark claimed that the apartment block and even the street itself embodied Steve.

"Charleston Street," he'd said the first time he'd gotten a hold of Steve's address. Steve hadn't given it to him, of course, but he'd learned of it anyway. "Really, Rogers? Could you have chosen a street name that less embodied your upstanding Captain Righteous persona?"

"I was under the impression that you were the one who considered me righteous?" was Steve's only reply.

Tony had snorted at that before sweeping his arms widely as though to encompass everyone in the SHIELD basement. "Trust me, Steve, I'm far from being the only one to think so."

Steve didn't think Charleston Street was a bad name or a bad street. He didn't think there was anything wrong with his apartment block either, even if Sam was right in that it might have been a little boring. Because Nat was right too. It was functional and all that he needed. Enough. Just enough.

For instance, the apartment on the third floor had not one but two bedrooms, the second of which Steve used for storage of that which he hadn't touched for years.

The kitchen was large enough for him to not cook in, the bathroom clean and refurbished, the floors actual wood – something that Sam had nodded approvingly of upon first entering Steve's flat despite the 'boring' impression.

Steve had his bed for the occasions he slept there, his simple lounge suite and the wide television that hadn't been used in months, and a smattering of personalised features that were more a product of his being disinclined to find a better place for them: a bookshelf not even a quarter filled with barely read novels, a clutter of pictures framed and propped around the television, a pot plant that Anna had given him years ago. "Some greenery in a home makes it feel only more homey," she'd said. Steve couldn't object to that, even if he barely spared the plant a second thought to remember to water it. It was a surprise it was still even alive.

In fact, the only issue Steve had ever had with his apartment was only recently birthed, and that was that it stood frustratingly far from a particular dustbin scant blocks away from the club 'the Red Room'.

Steve regretted that issue on his trip from Central NYPD at four in the morning. He regretted it as he made his way first to the street with it's loaded dustbin, then again when he'd decided that it really was too far to haul a body and instead decided to call a cab.

A body. Not a _dead_ body but a body nonetheless. Limp and unresponsive and unhelpful, but not dead. That had been the first thing Steve had checked – frantically so, in the darkness that swallowed the crevasse on the street of a crime scene. He hadn't truly begun to breathe again until he'd felt a pulse.

The trip back to the apartment that Steve so sparingly used was both too long and too short. Long, because it took _so long_ , and the cab driver kept shooting him wary glances when not asking, "You sure your friend's alright?"

"I'm sure," Steve said, and he hoped he spoke the truth.

At the same time, the returning trip was far too short, because Steve lost himself entirely in the moment. To the muted hum of the cab's engine beneath him, the whisper of a murmuring radio up front, he couldn't help but stare at his friend as he hadn't been able to stare for… for _so long_. The brief meeting weeks before hadn't been long enough to really _see_ him.

Bucky was older. Of course he was, but that fact was more apparent in the shadowed accents of pre-dawn. Steve stared and he couldn't stop himself, because despite years and ageing, he still looked like Bucky. He still possessed that eye-catching attractiveness he'd grown into as a boy, as a teenager, even if there was no accompanying smile. Even if his hair was overlong and unstyled, a little lank even. The same, and Steve had never been more aware of that fact than he was in the cab of silence broken only by indecipherable murmurs of music. As had happened so often, as had almost become expected, Steve was subjected to a wash of memories – of pasts disappeared into the past, of smiles and frowns and arguments that weren't really arguments. An arm slung over a shoulder, a snicker in an ear –

_A kiss to the cheek that was entirely, wholly and utterly –_

All of it. Steve had always been gifted with a good memory. He just hadn't quite realised how good it was until he was subjected to blow after blow time and time again.

And yet despite the upwelling of remembrance, both long past and not so long ago, any trace of youthful innocence was faded from Bucky's face. Even then, eyes closed and oblivious, a slight frown touched his forehead. There was hardness there, sharp angles that hadn't been before, that were only slightly smoothed in sleep.

No, not sleep. Unconsciousness. The sort of laxness that rocked Bucky in the seat and into Steve's shoulder was far gone from sleep. Steve felt his jaw clench just a little when Bucky rocked into him again and again. Maybe he was a little angry with Tony for that. Just a little.

They pulled into Charleston Street – boring, functional, Captain Righteous Charleston Street – and Steve nodded his thanks to the cab driver as they climbed out. Or as _he_ climbed out, for he had to drag Bucky after him, a limp and admittedly heavy weight with arm slung over his shoulders.

"You sure you're alright?" the cab driver asked, leaning slightly out of his window and peering at Steve as he straightened. A worried crease wrinkled his brow but Steve pinned it as wariness and reluctance to actually be required to help than real concern. It wasn't the cabbie's problem, after all.

Steve shook his head. "Thank you. We're alright."

The cabbie nodded. He leant back into his window slightly, regarding Steve for a moment longer. And then he was puttering away down the street and into the greyish gloom that wasn't quite edging towards morning but was making a good attempt. Steve turned from his departing ride and made his hobbling way to his apartment.

It was a struggle, and as much because Bucky was entirely unresponsive as because of his heaviness. With each step, Steve doubted his spur of the moment decision to deny taking him directly to a hospital. Steve was rarely one to reconsider his decisions; when he made up his mind, it was with thoughtfulness and because that decision was the best one. The right one.

Steve didn't do spontaneous. Not unless he was in the field and he couldn't afford to wait and not for decisions that really mattered. Not until then, when Bucky had needed him to. He wasn't going to regret withholding Bucky from the NYPD officers even though – _wrong, illegal, he's part of HYDRA –_ but he did feel concerned. Just a little.

It was with a grunt that Steve finally rolled Bucky onto his bed. Onto _Steve's_ bed, because as someone who barely slept in his own apartment, there was hardly a need to outfit it with _two_ beds. The mattress briefly protested the collapsed weight with a sprightly bounce before stilling, and Steve stood for a moment, simply catching his breath, feeling the weight of the night and the excitement drag at his muscles and…

And staring. He couldn't quite help but stare. At Bucky, because Bucky was instantly the centre of the room. Even without trying, he always had been.

The paleness of cheeks made paler by the darkness of an unlit room. The barest hint of stubble shadowing his jaw. The smear of overlong hair across his still-frowning forehead and the slight rise and fall of his chest that told Steve that he was alive. That Bucky was _definitely_ alive.

It didn't matter that he had blood – actual blood – on his sleeve. It didn't matter that those sleeves, that his entire outfit of dark boots and straps and laces, breathed shadow and unobtrusive and deadly in the way that Steve's Kevlar vest deemed armour. It didn't matter that only hours before Bucky had been fighting Steve's friends, had crushed Sam's fingers moments after launching Tony across the road like a discarded ragdoll. It didn't matter that he was HYDRA, a criminal.

Damn him, but it didn't matter to Steve that in saving Bucky, in keeping him from the law and in protecting him from SHIELD and everything that Steve had stood for so many years, he was doing Wrong. That it might all be wrong. That it _was_ wrong, and Steve shouldn't have done it.

Because Bucky had come before all of that; before SHIELD, before the force and the police academy, and before Steve had even decided that he would be Good. That he had to be Good – for himself, for his mom, for the world. Bucky had been there when he was a sickly little kid. He was the one who'd held Steve when he'd cried and no one else had fit quite right enough to do so.

That made it different. That made it an exception. Bucky was special, always had been, and it was more than the fact that he'd kissed Steve on the cheek and Steve hadn't been able to forget that barest of passing touches.

Cursing himself and the fact that innately, physically, and despite his steadfast moral compass, Steve knew there was no erasing his decision. He also knew that innately, physically, he didn't want to.

With a struggle, he managed to shake himself from his staring. And it was a struggle, because Steve have fairly sure he could have stood at the edge of his bed and stared with raptured intentness at his childhood friend for years and barely noticed time passing. But Steve had always been a doer. He'd always been one for action. Even as he stared, realisation of the situation and what it entailed niggled at him and demanded attention with increasing vigour.

The fight. Last night, barely hours before, the fight. Bucky had been hit over the head, and now he was unconscious. He'd been unconscious for quite a while, too. A concussion? Most likely. Which would mean…

Steve knew basic first aid. Everyone in SHIELD – everyone on the entire force – new basic first aid like a second language. Even as he stared, Steve's mind was ticking over the necessities and those necessities had him hastening out of the room in an instant.

He returned moments later with a bucket, a damp handtowel, an extra blanket and a half-crushed packet of Advil that he'd been surprised to find still in date. Moving with efficiency, Steve stacked the bucket to the ground – he didn't much care if he had to clean up vomit but it would be easier to have on hand – and dropped onto the edge of the mattress. The handtowel found it's way to Bucky's brow and Steve was in the process of dragging the blanket over him when he paused.

It wasn't really cold. Not _that_ cold, and even if procedure dictated a certain set of steps to follow, a blanket wasn't truly necessary. If anything, the spring morning crept towards warm, even in the open and heatless interior of Steve's apartment.

Discarding the blanket, Steve instinctively reached towards Bucky. To drag the jacket with its straps and buckles and too many pockets from his shoulders and attempt to provide a semblance of comfort. To tug gloves from fingers and boots from feet in a way that Steve hadn't even bothered to do for himself yet. Tony called him a captain, but Wanda was the one who sad he had a paternal streak. Maybe it was simply that streak surfacing.

Steve's fingers paused in their efficiency, however, when he grasped Bucky's hand. When he curled them around Bucky's own fingers and felt his breath catch just slightly at the sense of Not Right. This was a different kind of wrongness, however. It wasn't the wrongness of Bucky's relation to HYDRA, of the knives – _so many knives_ – that Steve hadn't really looked at but knew were stashed about Bucky's person. It wasn't even the juxtaposing impressions he'd received of Bucky that warred one another inside his head: the man with sunglasses and jeans, a casual openness about him as he stood alongside _Cafe Bianco_ the mimicked his childhood brightness and yet so vastly contrasted the blank-faced coldness, the focus, the deadliness of a human weapon holding a knife.

This wrongness was in the feeling of metal instead of bone. It was in the hardness instead of the soft give of skin. It wasn't because the glove beneath his fingers was a confusing mixture of Kevlar and leather that he couldn't quite discern. Steve hardly noticed that fact as he tugged at the fingers of Bucky's left glove and pulled it loose.

Metal. His hand was made of metal. Not robotic, really, or at least not any kind of robotic that Steve had ever seen. The shape of the hand was _hand_ -like, as though it had been physically born rather than wrought and moulded itself. More than that, as Steve stared with an indecipherable mess growing within him, he knew that it moved like a hand. He'd seen Bucky _use_ it just like a hand should be used, to hold a phone, to point a finger, to smack Sam over the head – and, abruptly, the way Sam had dropped as though slammed with a baseball bat made just a little more sense. Sam had been struck with a fist as many times as Steve had in the past, but not by a metal baton.

With slow hands, unable to draw his gaze away from the metallic fingers that just slightly reflected the growing morning light, Steve reached for Bucky. He drew a finger across knuckles that weren't giving and warm as they should have been. Down the length of Bucky's fingers – for they _were_ Bucky's fingers, even wrought from metal – and towards perfectly shaped fingernails. As Steve turned the hand in his own, it rolled just slightly, laxly, like a real hand should – except that this wasn't a real hand. Not at all.

Or a real wrist, Steve found, tugging Bucky's sleeve up slightly. Not a real hand, or wrist or… or arm? How far did it go? Steve felt something like horror well within him because just _how far did it go?_ What in the world had happened that Bucky… that he needed a…?

Steve had questions. He had so many questions, and more than just those that had plagued him for years. There was more than just the longing to know – "Where, why, how could you leave?" – and the more recent and demanding, "You're part of HYDRA? How, when, why? For how long? But _why?_ " Those questions had raged through Steve for months, only sharpening in their intensity, their longing to _know,_ the longer he remained ignorant.

Now a whole knew torrent of questions arose. Bucky had been in the Red Room. He'd approached Steve and almost, somehow, just maybe, cautioned him a split second before it had happened that something was indeed going to happen. Maybe it was simply Steve's wishful thinking, but he wished, and he thought, and that was what he concluded.

Bucky had been a part of the escape of the HYDRA members.

Bucky had fought against SHIELD and the police force to aid the escape of those members. He'd fought and he'd fought _hard_ , as though it had truly been of importance for him that the HYDRA reps escape.

Bucky had a metal arm.

All of the realisations, the questions entailed, were as mutually exclusive as one another. They bespoke riddles woven about themselves entirely self-contained and yet intertwined. There was so much Steve wanted to know, that he _needed_ to know. As he sat alongside Bucky, staring at the metal hand held in his own, at Bucky's face still frowning yet also somehow softened by sleep, he made his decision.

Steve had always stuck by his decisions.

That decisiveness was how, at eight o'clock that morning, he found himself standing alongside the front door of his apartment and struggling to instill a modicum of quietness into his voice as he spoke to Nat through his phone. Or at least it had been Nat at first. He wasn't quite sure how everyone else had climbed aboard, nor even how they had done it; Tony had likely hooked him up to some kind of stereo system of sorts.

"Wait, wait, wait." Tony's voice overrode the jumble of indecipherable words from other speakers. "So let me get this straight. You're not coming in?"

Steve closed his eyes, biting back a sigh. "I'm sorry."

"What the fuck, man?"

"You alright, Steve?" That was from Sam. He sounded genuinely concerned. "You need a hospital or something? If you got hit, then –"

"I'm fine," Steve interrupted, because he didn't want to hear his lie thrown back at him again. It had been bad enough to say it the first time around; Steve didn't like to lie, hated dishonesty, and wouldn't have done so in any other circumstances. But this was necessary. He couldn't leave Bucky alone in his apartment, and not only because he worried for his potential concussion. Steve knew he'd return to find him gone.

So he'd pretended to be suffering from Bucky's injury himself. The problem with that was –

"Steve, head injuries can oftentimes have more severe implications than initially understood," Vision said, his voice as mildly clinical as always despite his words. "Or so I've heard. Dr Banner is the expert on such matters."

"No, no, that's right," Bruce said, and though he sounded at a slight distance greater than the rest of Steve's colleagues, it was too close to be from across the room. Which meant that Bruce had actually stepped outside of his office. That was certainly something to be remarked upon. "Where exactly were you hit, Steve?"

"I'm fine," Steve reiterated, and this time he really did sigh. "I was just a little dizzy when I woke ten minutes ago –"

"Liar," Tony said. "We've been talking for more than ten minutes."

"Twelve minutes, then."

"That's better. Thank you."

Shaking his head, Steve couldn't help but smile just a little. For all of Tony's posturing, Vision's detachedness and Bruce's attempts at professional analysis, he knew they cared. It was moments like these, when something happened outside of the norm or the expected, that he knew they were more than simply colleagues. More than simply friends, too. Abraham and Anna might be his relatives, but SHIELD was his family too.

"They're not going to wait for you, Steve," Rhodie said, and Steve fathomed that he could see him frowning slightly. "There's too much excitement here and too many people to question."

"I know."

"Do you want us to try?" Sam asked.

It was a loaded question. Offhanded, almost, and yet it carried weight. _Do you want us to try?_ Steve understood what Sam meant. Try to waylay them. Try to keep the progression of the operation static rather than flowing forward in the frenzy it certainly would, just so Steve could be among them to witness what they'd struggled to achieve for years.

Sam was wrong to suggest it. Wrong to stand in the way of the law and impede its passage even for kindly reasons. The rest of SHIELD's operatives were wrong too from the moment Steve heard their jumbled murmurs of agreement, of "I reckon we could get Fury down with that," and "They're all bumbling idiots anyway, so it won't be so hard to accomplish." It was wrong but Steve loved them for it. Each and every one of them. That they were prepared to do as much for him – it meant something above and beyond the simple right and wrong he'd strived for years.

Because this was it. This was what they'd been reaching for years. The mission hadn't gone according to plan, but they'd still apprehended a wealth of criminals. The operations had been a bust in terms of accuracy, but they'd still pulled it off. For once, Loki's lead hadn't been just a building to the right or half a dozen criminals off the mark in number.

A bullseye. They'd struck at the very centre.

Steve wanted to be there. He desperately wanted to be at Central, amongst his SHIELD family and standing, watching, listening and participating on the progression of events. It wouldn't all happen quickly, Steve knew, but he didn't want to miss a second of it. Not now. Not when so much had happened and so much _would_ happen. It was big, it was _happening_ , it was progress and –

And Steve couldn't. He couldn't be there, because no matter how much he wanted to be, how important catching HYDRA and cutting off every single head once and for all was to him – no matter how much that need to erase the Bad and supplant it with the Good and clean, he couldn't. A part of him, a far deeper, more integral part of him, wanted, _needed_ , had to stay with Bucky. Bucky was his past. He was memories of times when Steve had been so much less than what he struggled to be. He was as essential to Steve as the organs pitted deep in his belly. Fourteen years apart hadn't changed that. If anything, they made the fact all the more apparent.

Steve wanted to be at Central. He just needed to be with Bucky more.

Biting back another sigh that was almost a groan, Steve shook his head. The guilt for his lie, for inducing such sincerity in his friends, made it even worse. "Thanks, Sam," he said. "But it's fine. I'll be there just as soon as I can be."

"We'll keep a running record for you or something, then," Sam said. "Keep you up to date."

"Would you be the one to write that record, Wilson?" Clint asked. "You with all of your faithful friendship?"

"Of course. Me and Wanda."

"Why me?"

"If I asked you to do it for Steve, would you?"

"… Fair enough."

"Fuck that, I'll just assault your phone with constant updates," Tony said. "That's what nagging colleagues are for, right?"

Steve smiled. "Right. Thanks, Tony."

"Don't go getting all sappy on me, Cap."

"I'll bear that in mind."

"Shall I pick you up this afternoon, Steve? A little later, maybe. When you're feeling up to it."

The voices of Steve's friends still sounded in the background. Half of the words were a blur of murmurs and the other half didn't make much more sense. Steve barely heard any of it, however, for the tone of Nat's question was… very telling.

Nat was smart. If Steve were to choose one person, he'd consider Nat the smartest person in SHIELD. Tony was the genius, Bruce the scientist, Vision the IT wizard and Clint hawkish in his perceptiveness, but it was Nat who was the smartest. She seemed to simply know things sometimes, and about Steve much of the time when he didn't necessarily want such knowledge realised. Sam was his oldest friend of SHIELD, but Steve suspected Nat probably understood him best.

It would have been comforting, almost touching, if it hadn't been just a little creepy sometimes. And if Nat didn't sound just a little like she knew Steve was spurting bullshit.

 _How does she always know?_ Steve wondered, giving a mental shake of his head. He had no idea. Probably the same way that Steve understood she knew without Nat specifically revealing it, though his own knowing was of a far more amateur strain.

"Thanks, Nat," he said, and he hoped his words sounded as sincere and grateful as they should have been. "I'll text you a bit later?"

"Mm," was Nat's only reply. And then, with a click that was likely from her very finger, the mess of voices filtering through Steve's phone was silenced.

Steve slumped against the front door at his back. He was tired, then. Tired in a way that the flood of adrenaline, the morbid thrill of the chase, the success of the operation and the hardened, grim satisfaction for the criminals being apprehended before him had forced oversight. Steve hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours, and when he had it was only in fits and bursts. He would never admit weariness to anyone, never let it show simply because _everyone_ was tired, _everyone_ worked hard, and _everyone_ was running on empty out of sheer necessity. It made the nature of his lie that much worse.

 _I should be there with them_ , he thought. _I should be working, helping…_

Steve pushed himself away from the door. Not now. He couldn't. As he returned to Bucky, to his Bucky, it was with the knowledge that only one thing could push him past that incessant determination. That one thing would almost make him Wrong. Was he wrong for acting as he did? Was he actually wrong, despite fighting to embody the exact opposite for so long? Steve wasn't sure. He was always certain about everything, always decisive, and yet in this he didn't know. As he stepped on unconsciously quiet feet back to his bedroom, he considered. He chastised, yes, and he –

He stopped. Just inside the doorway, Steve stopped. The moment of his sudden breathlessness wasn't because of the sudden influx of morning light that had made its way into the room. It wasn't because he was made starkly aware how little he'd slept at his apartment for being almost unable to recall the last time he'd seen that light filtering through the half-closed blinds. It was because the bed was empty. Because where Bucky had been minutes before was only a mess of sheets. For that, Steve couldn't breathe.

Gone.

Again.

Steve didn't want him gone. Bucky had disappeared from him once – no, twice if he counted weeks before on the sidewalk. Three times including Dogend Docks. Four? Steve knew he didn't want that. He didn't want it so badly it hurt. This Bucky he didn't wholly know, perhaps, was different because of the _arm_ and Steve's opposite because of _HYRDA,_ but he didn't want him gone. Not that. Not ever.

"You look like you're about to murder someone. Or ask them to politely die, maybe, 'cause I can't imagine you actually killing anyone."

For both the longest and shortest of seconds, Steve closed his eyes. He managed a breath. He turned slowly into the still-shadowed half of the room and blinked his eyes open. And there was Bucky.

Why he'd gotten out of bed Steve didn't know. Why he'd decided to sit in the corner of the room, back propped against the wall and facing the doorway, was a little easier to guess. Steve had seen criminals before. He'd seen terrified victims, too. Bucky didn't look like a victim as he stared at Steve with unblinking dark eyes, expressionless bordering on a blank mask, but he couldn't be a criminal either. Steve wouldn't let him be, even if he was a part of HYDRA. Not in his mind, at least. Not Bucky.

Striving for the kind of composure that Bucky presented, the kind that Wanda always said he could manage perfectly yet Steve never quite felt himself, he turned towards Bucky. Folding his arms across his chest, he planted his feet widely; there was a certain sense of grounding attained from such a stance. "You're awake."

Bucky stared at him. He still didn't blink. He was still eerily expressionless. "An impressive deduction."

"And you're out of bed."

"Duly noted. I hadn't noticed."

There was something to Bucky's tone, a dry kind of cynicism that Steve detachedly realised he'd possessed in his younger years but hadn't quite embraced. Steve was always the blunt one, always direct. Bucky was the one that used sarcasm and wit to dance a performance of the truth while seeming to offend no one.

Steve took a step towards him. "How are you feeling?"

Still no blinking. "That's your first question?"

"It is."

"You should use your quota more wisely."

"Do I have a quota?"

Bucky stared at him as though calculating the degree of idiocy a single individual could possess. It wasn't the first time that Steve had been pinned by such a gaze from him – he could remember it only too well from years before – but this time was different. Bucky was different. There wasn't a hint of teasing amusement to his expression, nor the kind of exasperation that bespoke jest rather than sincerity of the consideration. It stung just a little.

Then Bucky was pushing himself to his feet. He rose fluidly, and had Steve not been watching him intently he might have missed that he supported himself against the wall just a little bit. He regarded Steve flatly for a moment before replying. "Yes."

"Yes what?"

"Questions are a limited resource. You should ration them wisely."

Steve took another step towards him. He felt like he was approaching a wounded animal. A wounded predator, to be precise. "So you'll answer my questions?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"You always have a choice, Bucky."

For a split second there was a break in Bucky's blank façade. A slightly twitch of his nose, of his lip, the faintest roll of an eye. Then he straightened and Steve was made abruptly and very aware that this was Bucky but it was also someone else. Someone who could slam a fist to topple a man. Someone who worked for HYDRA. Someone who had disappeared for fourteen years and reappeared with the weight of history behind him. He was still Bucky, but he was also something more on top of that.

"You were always an idealist, Steve," Bucky murmured, and there was more of that cynicism than affection in his tone. It stung a little, too.

Steve tightened the fold of his arms over his chest. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"It's not. Just a very ignorant thing."

"Then maybe I'm ignorant."

"I know. You always have been."

"Was," Steve said, because he couldn't help but object just a little bit. Bucky had a history that Steve didn't know, but so did Steve. He wasn't a weak little child anymore. And maybe he was still a little idealistic, but Steve understood the world a little better now, too. Instead of simply believing in possibility, he chose to consider it possible while knowing that it was a struggle to attain. "A lot's changed since we were kids."

"You could say that, " Bucky said, nodding, and he sounded entirely sincere this time.

For a moment, there was a pause. A silence. Steve was very aware of himself, of Bucky's tense stance and ready attentiveness, of the distance between the darkened corner and the door. He hoped that Bucky wouldn't make a break for it, wouldn't run and just leave him hanging as he had before, but Steve _was_ a realist in some regards. He chose to consider the ideal while understanding that it was often impossible.

Bucky fulfilled that realism with a curt word. "I need to go."

Steve felt his jaw tighten. "You were concussed."

"I were." It was a statement rather than a question.

"From what I can deduce, yes. You were hit pretty hard and you shouldn't be –"

"I'm fine."

"Maybe."

"It doesn't matter. I can stand."

 _That doesn't mean you're fine_ , Steve wanted to say. It hurt to see Bucky standing before him, even with the power and poise he visibly possessed, because Steve knew it wasn't wholly true. He knew that some of it, at least, was a front. The evidence lay in Bucky's rigidity that forbade even the slightest swaying, in the barest touch of his half-hidden hand to the wall behind him. So many times in the past Bucky had held Steve up when he couldn't stand on his own two feet, and now…

The one time Steve could offer to do the same, Bucky didn't want it. That much was apparent in the slowly rising morning light; Steve didn't need to ask to be aware of that fact. Bucky didn't want his help.

"I'm not going to let you leave just yet," Steve found himself saying, and he heard the hard, forbidding edge to his own words. Wanda said he was kind, Tony that he was a butterball wrapped up in false toughness, and Sam claimed he was one of the nicest people around. Steve didn't feel like a very nice person at that moment. He didn't even want to be. "Not yet."

Bucky regarded him. Steve wasn't sure he'd blinked once throughout their entire exchange. He seemed a different person entirely to Steve's childhood friend. Different even to the man he'd seen so briefly on the street. "Are you going to force me to stay, Steve?"

Steve's jaw squeaked for its tightness. "I'm not going to force you. I'm asking. For old time's sake."

Bucky snorted.

That was it. One sound, and Steve was thrown back in time. How often had Steve said something foolish in the past to elicit just that response? He couldn't think. He would lose count if tried to count at all. A spread of something warm and just a little painful curled in Steve's chest.

Bucky shook his head just slightly. "I think you're confusing me with someone who has morals."

Steve shrugged a shoulder. "I don't think I'm confusing you with anyone. I just want to –" _make sure you're okay_ "- ask you some questions."

"And that's it?"

"That's it."

"Are you going to try and arrest me, too?"

"Would I manage?"

Bucky's lip twitched and Steve wasn't sure if it was in the beginnings of a smile or a grimace. "You'd try. I know you would. You suit being a police officer too well."

"Would I manage?" Steve persisted.

Bucky stared at him. "No."

 _I thought as much,_ Steve thought. He didn't need to have seen Bucky fighting, see him throw Tony across the road and smack Sam to the ground, to know he was dangerous. It was written in every line of him, from his unobtrusively black clothes to the tension and readiness of his stance. Almost passing out, potential dizziness, head aching or on the verge of vomiting, any of which Steve could anticipate being Bucky's current status, likely wouldn't minimise that fact.

An injured wolf bit the hardest. Steve thought that necessity would likely afford Bucky a very hard bite indeed, and he wasn't sure if their childhood friendship would dampen it any.

"Just let me ask some questions," Steve repeated. "Please."

"Please isn't going to get you anywhere," Bucky said flatly.

"Even so. Please."

There was another long pause. In that time, Steve didn't move. The sunlight crept through the window and spread its fingers far enough that it reached Bucky. The metallic reflection of his exposed hand was thin but somehow blinding.

And then, "Three."

Steve blinked. "Three?"

"Three questions. I'll give you the answers to three."

It was more than Steve could have asked for, and he didn't know why Bucky was giving them to him. But he wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. He wasn't so foolish nor so idealistic as that. Not anymore, anyway. Still, "Then I'll give you three in return."

"I didn't ask for that."

"I know. I'm giving them anyway."

Bucky snorted again and Steve nearly smiled. He was different, this Bucky, but there were little bits and pieces that still remained. "You're a fucking idiot, Steve. Always were."

"I know," Steve acknowledged. Then he felt his humour fade. Three questions. Just three. He'd have to make them good, because he didn't hold high hopes that Bucky would allow him more. "Then I'll ask."

"Make them good," Bucky said, echoing Steve's thoughts. Then he leant back against the wall slightly, casually, and it was so like the Bucky Steve remembered. So like the boy he'd been

\- _the way he leant against the doorframe like he owned the room and the hall beyond, like he was exactly where he should be and no one would even think to tell him to move –_

and yet so vastly different. So much time had passed.

Steve swallowed. "Why do you run with HYDRA?"

Bucky did blink that time. Slowly, a measure motion, as though each twitch of muscle that allowed it to happen was deliberate. His dark eyes were flat and only flattened further. "Right for the jugular."

"I'm not wasting my questions."

"I can see that." Bucky blinked slowly once more. It wasn't quite a gesture of unease, but it somehow seemed so for the contrast to his prior steadfast staring. "It's simple, Steve. They did me a good. I'm just returning the favour."

Something jerked within Steve. Something angry and indignant that had his jaw clenching tightly once more. "What do you mean -?"

"Is that your second question?"

Steve's pursuit staggered to a halt. Was it? Would his second question be in pursuit of HYDRA, or Bucky's involvement with them? It should be. That would be the Right thing to do, would help SHIELD, and somehow Steve knew that regardless of how intrusive his question would be, Bucky would answer him. Maybe not wholly or profusely, and maybe just as minimalist as his three sentences of seconds before, but he would.

It was the Right thing to do. And Steve couldn't do it.

"Ask me a question," he said instead.

Bucky's lips twitched again, the barest hint of movement, and Steve was almost certain it was in amusement this time. _He would be amused at that_ , Steve thought, the memory whispering at the very back of his mind. That was how Bucky was.

"Why didn't you arrest me?"

There it was. There it was, as Steve had all but anticipated, and yet the phrasing of it infuriated him. Not 'why did you save me?' Not, 'what am I to you that you didn't turn me over?' That was what it should have been, but it wasn't. Steve spoke his reply as coolly as he could manage. "Because you're my friend."

If Bucky could reply succinctly to the point of not replying at all then so could Steve.

Bucky shook his head in the barest of motions. He didn't drop his gaze from Steve's for a second. "Was."

"Are."

"Were."

"Still are."

Another barely headshake. "You're an idiot, Steve."

"So you've told me," Steve said. "Now it's my turn. Why do you have a metal arm?"

Steve could have asked the question in a number of ways. He could have asked what happened to Bucky's arm, how it had resulted in a metallic prosthetic so refined that it could have climbed from a sci-fi film, or just what it was. But he didn't. He had to pick his questions carefully to avoid Bucky dancing around it, to gain as much insight from his reply as possible in a way that Bucky couldn't help but provide, to –

"The old one fell off so I got a new one."

 _Fuck_.

Steve didn't swear. Or more correctly, he rarely swore, and even more rarely aloud, and as such he knew many thought that he never did. It felt wrong to do so – crass, a bout of verbal violence that Steve didn't agree with. But that moment felt warranted because it was so fucking frustrating.

Steve didn't let it show, but he felt it nonetheless. He wanted to demand that Bucky wasn't playing fair with his answers, that he should reply _properly_. But they'd never stipulated the degree of answering; Steve should have realised that. Bucky had always said Steve was the smart one out of the two of them, but he'd always overlooked his own smarts.

Biting back the urge to demand, Steve nodded. Bucky didn't almost-smile. He just stared before stating, "Who's your mole?"

For a heartbeat, Steve didn't know what Bucky was talking about. Their exchange – or lack of exchange – was drifting so distinctly from SHIELD's operations and HYDRA's escapades that someone like Loki and his intel wasn't even on the fringes of his awareness. Then he remembered and a different kind of frustration welled within him.

Steve should have asked something like that. He should have asked about HYDRA, about their base and who their real head was. It would have felt wrong to do so, to abuse the situation, even if Bucky played dirty in doing so himself.

But he didn't, and Steve knew even as he had the thought that he wouldn't use his final question in such a regard. An idiot, Bucky called him, and he certainly was. How could he think that anything would be more important than SHIELD's operations and filching intelligence from an insider? It _shouldn't_ have been, and Bucky _shouldn't_ hold greater importance to Steve than a six-year commitment, but at that moment it was very true.

He replied with as much minimalism as he could manage. "He's a brother of one of our officers," he said. No name. No defining characteristics. Bucky hadn't asked for either of them, and though it wasn't a proper reply, it was what Steve gave.

Bucky nodded slightly, almost as though he'd expected as much. It annoyed Steve just a little, that ready, flat-eyed acceptance, and it was that as much as anything that had him speaking with the promptness – the demand – that he did. "Why did you kiss me?"

Bucky didn't move. He didn't blink and he didn't roll his eyes. It was the even greater rigidity of his stance that told Steve his question had been truly unexpected, and that knowledge flared satisfaction within him that had been riffling morosely at the not-answers Bucky had given him.

It only lasted for a second, however. Only for the barest of seconds, and then Bucky changed. Pushing himself off the wall, away from the corner, he stepped towards Steve. A twitch of his lips that was almost a smirk quirked, and his eyebrow quirked just slightly. He cocked his head a little and that – _that_ was Bucky. It was the Bucky that Steve remembered from their childhood, and the effect was diminished none by the combat gear, Bucky's paleness, the smear of blood on his jaw that Steve hadn't wiped off in his brief ministrations.

He paused just before Steve, and because Steve refused to step backwards it was very close. They were of a height, standing eye to eye, and Steve swore he saw the barest hint Bucky's sparkling childhood in his dark gaze. "That's your third question?"

"That's my question," Steve said, and he was only detachedly relieved to hear his voice sounded unfazed.

"About a passing kiss of the street?"

"That's my question," Steve repeated. He could hear his heartbeat in his ear. Was it his question? Why had he asked that?

Bucky's smirk twitched again, eyebrow rising further, and Steve had always known him to be but at that moment he _saw_ that Bucky was attractive. He saw it and _felt_ it like a kick in the gut, and it meant something different. It meant different because Bucky had kissed him so briefly and Steve hadn't been able to forget it. It was different because Steve couldn't forget that 'passing kiss'.

Bucky stood close enough that when his eyes dropped to Steve's lips it was impossible to miss. His head tipped again like a contemplative bird. "Obviously, because I wanted to."

Steve had a fourth question. And a fifth. He had dozens, really, hundreds, and foremost amongst those, before HYDRA and SHIELD and metal arms, was _why?_ But Steve didn't get the chance to ask any of them. He didn't get the chance to say anything, because with the smirk still playing upon his lips, Bucky's hand – his metal hand – reached to Steve's collar, hooked a finger, and tugged him towards him. Steve barely had the reflexive urge to pull away because Bucky was _still dangerous_ before he felt lips press against his own.

Steve had kissed before. He'd kissed several people before, in fact; first Peggy Carter, who had been the love of his life for all of two years, then Sharon, then Jamie when he'd dated the young man just after the police academy. Not anyone for years, however, because he hadn't the time. Sex was different to this kind of kissing, and Steve barely had time to think of either but in the passing heat of passion.

It wasn't that which stopped his breath in his lungs, however. It wasn't that which froze him in place for the barest of moments before every instinct within him was screaming to kiss back. It was because this was Bucky, who Steve hadn't truly seen in years. Bucky, who he knew was attractive and felt in the tightening below his gut. Bucky, who had kissed him not just the once 'in passing' but this time too, who kept his finger hooked at Steve's collar and tipped his head just slightly so that their lips fit together just right.

It wasn't brief, but it was chaste. And then it wasn't even that, because with the flush of instinct, Steve lost himself. He stepped backwards once, then again, then his hand grabbed onto Bucky's wrist and pulled him after him as he all but stumbled backwards into the bedroom wall. Then it became something that was very definitely not chaste at all.

Steve breathed Bucky's breath. He lost himself in the feeling of his lips, the press of a tongue, the bite of teeth in his lip that were followed by the nip of his own in return. His fingers curled, tightening around Bucky's wrist, and he held on with every intention of never letting go as he found his eyes closing, his free hand dropping to Bucky's waist to tug him closer, the press of Bucky's chest to his own as he allowed – only allowed – himself to be pulled against him.

Steve didn't know what it was.

He didn't know _why_ it was.

But it was Right. It was Good. And Steve revelled in it.

How long he lost himself, Steve wasn't sure. His lips lost feeling, but he didn't care. His breath grew heavy, but alongside Bucky's that didn't seem to matter. When it became too much and yet still wasn't enough, when Steve felt heat pool almost painfully in his groin, the urge to draw away that he never wanted to pursue blossomed. He didn't get a second to decide whether he should. Whether it was the Right thing to do or not. Bucky broke the moment with a gasp that Steve _felt_ throughout his entire body and drew away from him just slightly.

With a struggle, Steve opened his eyes. He met Bucky's own, darkened and intent and unblinking for a different reason this time, and he couldn't look away. _He_ couldn't, and yet Bucky, standing so close that they almost touching, had been touching, somehow managed. With the barest flicker of his eyes downwards, he dropped his gaze between them. An eyebrow raised again, the hint of the smirk upon his lips was decidedly more noticeable this time.

"Did you want me to take care of that for you?" he murmured, so close, breath so warm, that Steve almost groaned. "Or would you rather do it yourself?"

Steve wanted it. He wanted Bucky so badly in that moment, with a fierce and desperate need that he hadn't known he could possibly possess, that he would _ever_ possess for Bucky, that it almost spilled out in a blurted, " _Yes_." But Steve was considering. He acted instinctively in the heat of battle – in all different kinds of battle – but he was thoughtful. And right then, his thoughts were telling him:

_This is Bucky. Bucky would do that?_

Memories resurfaced. Of their childhood and snatches of fights from so long ago. There was so much between then; how could Steve allow _that_ to be added to the list. Despite the almost-pain of his arousal, how desperately he wanted to take Bucky up on his offer, Steve didn't think he could. Not now, anyway. Maybe not… because it wasn't Right.

Shaking his head, Steve reluctantly drew away from Bucky. It wasn't much with the weight of the wall behind him, but enough that Bucky took the hint. "I wouldn't ask you to do that."

"You wouldn't be asking," Bucky said, his voice somehow grown mild. Deceptively mild, Steve thought. He wondered what that meant; he hadn't heard such a thing from his Bucky before. Not ever.

Steve swallowed. "You still have your third question."

Bucky nodded slowly. Then his eyes dropped once more and his smirk resurfaced. "Maybe you'd care to fix yourself first."

Steve didn't blush, rarely did, but he certainly felt the urge to in that moment. Even more so, because, "And you?"

Bucky lifted a single shoulder. "I'm fine."

Steve didn't know what to make of that. Whether to be disappointed – because what did 'fine' mean? Had he felt nothing? – or simply confused, because Bucky had kissed him not once but twice as well as the echoing, "Obviously, because I wanted to." But Steve didn't ask, because he'd already used up his questions for the moment. Just as he'd promised, he wouldn't ask any further.

Inclining his head with a murmured, "One moment," Steve took himself briefly from the room. He thought he could feel Bucky staring after him, but he didn't glance over his shoulder to check. The bathroom seemed all the barer for his emptiness, and Steve was very aware of the heat of his skin as he leant back against the relative coolness of the door. He was very aware of the dissatisfaction of a single hand as well, and it was a thoroughly disappointing finale to a gameplay that Steve hadn't even anticipated would arise.

Still, he fixed himself up. He regained composure with a splash of water to his face, a deep breath and a moment to stare at himself in the mirror hanging over the faucet. His face was composed, though Steve didn't know how. He felt like a storm roiled beneath the surface of the skin, but then… Nat had always told him he was good at putting up his façade when he needed to. He'd never asked how she knew it was a façade to start with.

Then he left from the bathroom and returned to the bedroom. Once more, he stopped in the doorway.

He stared at the bareness. At the silence. He stared, and for a long moment Steve couldn't quite believe it. Then he was kicking himself for his stupidity.

 _Fucking hell, Steve, could you have played any more into his hands?_ Steve didn't swear, but this time it felt warranted.

Striding into the room, Steve stood at its very centre. He drew his gaze around himself slowly, turning just slightly with a practiced eye alighting upon all of the untouched details in the professional observation he'd developed over years of experience. Detachedly, however, for that storm still raged within him. A different storm, though. An angry, self-deprecating, and desperately longing storm.

How could he have been so stupid?

How could he have walked so obliviously into deception?

How could Bucky have left _again?_

Steve thought all of that and more as he detachedly analysed the room. The mussed bed sheets. The empty bucket. The damp cloth that wouldn't be so damp anymore. The window, half-opened and letting in a flood of mellow air and sunlight.

The notebook that sat on Steve's bedside table, a scribble coiled upon its surface.

Steve crossed the room. He picked it up. He read, and he closed his eyes. "Are you kidding me?" he found himself saying aloud as he glanced over his shoulder to the window. "Are you kidding me, Bucky?"

He felt hot and cold in waves. Wrung out and tired. Frustrated and depressed and with the nearly insuppressible urge to punch something. A wall, maybe. And yet as Steve read Bucky's scribbled note once, the words slanted and messy as they always had been, he laughed. He actually laughed.

_Think of this as payback. A window for a window._

_See you next time, Stevie._

A window. Fourteen years ago, Steve had climbed through Bucky's window into an apartment that he wasn't ever supposed to enter. And Bucky remembered.

At least he remembered that.

* * *

"I should have known this was going to happen."

Steve didn't glance to where Clint stood at his side. He hadn't bothered to turn from the one-way mirror each and every time that Clint had said just those words over the past week. After the first instance, the phrase became something of a broken record tune. Steve didn't think Clint even knew he said it anymore.

"You couldn't have known," Steve said, just as he'd been saying all week.

"It couldn't have been so easy," Clint continued, and from the corner of his eye Steve saw his similarly detached staring through the one-way mirror into the room's occupants. His expression was grim. "It couldn't ever be so easy as just catching the bad guys and having them spill all of their secrets."

Steve silently agreed. Silently, because he'd openly agreed numerous times already and Clint seemed to be hearing him less and less with each repetition. Steve knew it wasn't because he'd forgotten his aids; Clint only did that on purpose.

The truth was that Steve _did_ agree. Everyone did, and that included all of SHIELD, Fury himself, and then the police for representatives and questioners that had been clawing to drag anything from the apprehended criminals for days.

Nothing. They'd gotten nothing – or at least nothing of value. Those head-honchoes that had been caught red-handed? Those master criminals that shouldn't have known about the lead to defend themselves, who should have been caught in twice their number for the unexpectedness, who should also have been caught in the midst of illicit activities – they gave nothing. Or nothing except for the titbits that told Steve, SHIELD, and every questioner that they _were_ nothing.

It was so damn frustrating. Steve had hoped, had considered, that they might have gotten something solid for a change, but though Loki's intel had been valid, the end result wasn't anything so exceptional. The captured HYDRA weren't higher ups that they'd caught. Hell, Steve didn't know if any of them could ever even answer the questions being asked of them. In the light of day rather than the elusiveness of a dark night, the members of HYDRA looked far less prestigious, exalted and sure of themselves.

Steve stared at the man currently under question as Clint continued to murmur at his side. He was a thin creature, wan for more than natural paleness, and he sat slightly hunched yet still composed in his metal seat smack-bang in the middle of the room. He didn't speak, simply staring at the questioner as questions were posed, a pause for reply was waited, and a sketched note was added when none was received.

It had been going for days. _Days._ And Steve was frustrated.

No intel from the apprehended.

No word from Loki who, in all likelihood, had to duck for cover after the Red Room incident.

No further leads and only a wavering understanding of where SHIELD was headed.

No… Bucky.

Was it wrong of Steve to think that the latter was the worst part? He didn't know. In the light of Bucky's absence, of his disappearance once more, Steve was beginning to question his initial disregard for right and wrong. He'd never done that before, yet even more concerning than simple disregard…

It didn't matter. Over the past week, thinking of Bucky – _a kiss, warmth, the stare of unblinking eyes –_ Steve had himself rocking on his foundations, because he suddenly understood that it didn't matter. To him, whether Bucky was Wrong or part of HYDRA, whether Steve should have apprehended him alongside every one of the other criminals, it didn't matter. To Steve, Bucky was an exception.

He was Wrong for thinking it yet Steve thought it anyway.

Bucky had called Steve an idealist, and maybe he was. Maybe he did have idealistic visions, and maybe it was even a little immature of him. Nothing was perfect. Nothing was easy, or fit together without seams. Nothing was quite so black and white as Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, despite the fact that Steve knew he segregated as such in his head. Even the police force itself had its degree of wrongness, though SHIELD somehow managed to detach themselves from most of it; not even the force could escape a hint of tarnish and corruption. That was just the world.

SHIELD wasn't, though. Maybe that was why it had always been so easy for Steve to cling to his schemas. SHIELD had always seemed just a little aloof in its unyielding dedication to ending HYDRA. Steve fit with that.

But Bucky skewed his sights. He blurred the edges, because Bucky was _Bucky_. As soon as he crept into the picture, right and wrong for once didn't seem to have a place. Steve's friendship with Bucky was as old as his understanding of black and white. Older, even. They were exclusive in importance, in relevance, despite that the more Steve considered them both the more he realised they clashed.

Bucky was part of HYDRA. That made Bucky bad. Wrong. And yet, to Steve, Bucky was never Bad. He could never be Wrong. He was simply Bucky.

 _Bucky, my friend._ Steve thought, and even as he stared at the man seated still and silent before his questioner, it was Bucky's flatly staring eyes he saw. _He's my oldest friend, my best friend. He was there with me through it all. He was… he_ is _…_

Bucky had kissed him. Not once but twice. How such was relevant to the larger picture Steve couldn't rationally say, except that it was. Steve cared, and he couldn't help but relive the encounter over, and over, and over…

There was something wrong with him. Bad shouldn't feel so Good.

"… could just get in there and question them myself," Clint was saying, and Steve tuned back in because this was a direction barely touched upon. "Me or Wanda. She's good at pulling things from people."

Steve agreed to that. Or at least he agreed to the sentiment behind Clint's words. There was a reason Wanda spent most of her time on her phone, speaking to faceless informants and relaying intelligence that had led to nipping at HYDRA's heels on countless occasions over the past year. Wanda had a way of convincing people to provide her knowledge that was so far removed from the quiet, coldly angry girl Steve had first met as to be unrecognisable. She was the best they had. Before Loki, it had been almost exclusively Wanda who fed them new leads.

Despite Steve's agreement, however, he shook his head at Clint's words. His arms tightened in their fold across his chest. "We're not putting Wanda in there."

Clint nodded. "I know. I'm just stating a fact."

"She'd chew them apart."

"I know that, too," Clint repeated, and he likely did. For all of Wanda's convincing act, she didn't manage quite so well in person as she did over the phone. "A shame, that."

"Maybe we should leave the questioning to the experts," Steve said, and it sounded like lip service even to his own ears.

Clint clearly heard it too. He scoffed in what was far from amusement. "Yeah. 'Cause they're doing such a good job of it already." Then, shaking his head, he turned towards the door from the observation room and left the few other watching officers behind. Steve remained for only a moment longer before following him.

There was work to be done. The clean up of the Red Room – conducted primarily by SHIELD as they were the designated HYDRA department – and the scouring of the evidence gleaned from the site – which was little enough, to say the least. There was paperwork to fill out, reports to write, feeds to run, and checking and double and triple checking of grainy photographs that were just as likely to be of civilians fleeing the scene as they were to be HYDRA members.

For a week it had been ensuing, and it would continue as such for at least another week. Steve knew this. He knew it despite SHIELD never having happened across quite so many HYDRA snakes at once, let alone apprehending a firm handful of them. Operations and operation clean up didn't happen overnight. Oftentimes they even included the nights, and Steve...

If he'd been able to force himself to, he likely would have stayed at the SHIELD basement alongside the rest of his colleagues. He couldn't, though. Not when he needed to return to his apartment just in case.

The chime of the elevator sounded a moment before the doors hissed open, and Steve followed Clint as he stepped into the usual mayhem of the SHIELD basement. If anything, it was even more chaotic than usual, and Steve couldn't blame anyone who contributed to that chaos. Mountains of paperwork in what was usually a soft-copy world spread everywhere, the wide projection screen across one wall of the room was so cluttered with pictures and articles as to be unreadable, and the _sound_. The sound was far greater than it should have been, and Steve didn't think it was only because they had a handful of additional officers spread about the room. He couldn't blame Clint for surreptitiously switching his hearing aids off as he crossed to his desk. Steve followed in the wake of his passage towards his own as he was assaulted by voices.

"Yeah, but that's what I'm saying, Rhodie," Tony all but shouted at a volume unnecessary for Rhodie's proximity at his side. "The pixilation is shit. It doesn't work like that."

"So fix it up with your techno gadgets, Tony," Rhodie replied, and there was the kind of exasperated vexation to his tone that suggested the argument had endured for some time. "Don't tell me your shit can't sharpen the –"

"I doesn't matter how refined my 'shit' is," Tony growled back. "The original image is crap. I couldn't refine it even if I –"

"I said I have got it handled," Wanda snapped, and Steve's sidelong attention drew from Tony and Rhodie's argument towards her desk. Her cold expression was heated only by the sharpness of her eyes as she all but glared at Vision, back ramrod straight and almost quivering in whatever anger gripped her. "Let me do my job how I think it should be done."

"I'm questioning your methods, Wanda," Vision said, and though he wasn't visibly angry there was a distinct impression of world-weariness to his following sigh. Though Steve at times considered him at least partially a computer himself, even Vision was beginning to show strain. "I merely caution that you may wish to stave off initiating contact with the Hitchcock Sector until after –"

"I said _I've_ _got it handled_."

An officer from up top nearly tripped over a desk as she hastened to Nat's side. "This doesn't seem relevant," she was saying, holding out a spread of matte photographs, "but I think –"

"I'll be the judge of that," Nat said, and she didn't even glance away from her corkboard that Steve knew was pinned with countless articles, notes, and pictures. She was frowning severely. "You can leave, Katelyn."

"But I –"

"I said you can leave."

A cluster of officers stood in the midst of the room, talking in what Steve deemed an unnecessary act. Couldn't they take their discussion elsewhere? Another officer nearly bowled into Steve in his haste to stumble to the elevator behind him. Steve caught a glimpse of Fury as he strode into his partitioned not-room; a moment later Thor of the Asgard Squad disappeared after him. And finally, above it all and in a sudden, roaring snap that entirely overwhelmed any other tight, tense and twitching conversation, the Hulk bellowed.

"Out! Get _out_ of my _lab_!"

Bruce wasn't a violent person. Or at least he wasn't until he 'went Hulk' as Tony called it. Steve had long ago recognised the almost double personality Bruce exhibited when his Hulk surfaced, and for once agreed with Tony's sentiment in his nickname. Bruce could be somewhat intimidating when angry.

Apparently the assistant microbiologist that Steve had seen half a dozen times that week already thought so too, for at Bruce's words the man appeared in the doorway to his lab as though thrust by the physical force of the shout. Bruce's words chased him further with, "Touch even a single compound microscope on your way out and I _swear_ you'll regret ever having fingers."

Suffice it to say that the assistant, a leggy cricket of a man, didn't touch anything. He swept towards the elevators with many a backward glance over his shoulder, many a scowl, and Steve heard his rapid-fire muttering as he went. "… just doing my job… grumpy son-of-a-bitch…" Then he disappeared with a chime of the elevator.

Steve watched him leave. As he drew alongside his own desk – his chaotic mess of a desk – he watched them all. His gaze drew towards Tony and Rhodie, as they continued their argument as they scarcely conducted, the fastness of friendship rarely deteriorating to such a degree. To Wanda, as she turned pointedly from Vision's weary gaze and, lips thinned, raised her phone to her ear once more. To Nat, where she stared daggers at her corkboard and Clint, where he'd already dived headfirst into his paperwork once more. The officers – _why were they even here?_ – were making their slow, cumbersome way towards the elevator as though they had all the time in the world. As though they didn't perceive the exhaustion and frustration and agitation in the SHIELD workers as they ran on minimal battery life.

They were all tired. They were all drawn and the anger that sprung from lips and speared towards their fellows wasn't genuine. There was only so much high-tension and speed that could be maintained before patience wore thin. Steve understood that. It was one of the reasons he had accompanied Clint up to the observation room; simply getting away from the heat of the drudgery battle for a time was a much-needed respite.

Not that it was really soothing, Steve considered. If anything, it only manifested frustration in a different area because the questioners? They'd achieved nothing. And as of yet, the infiltration of the Red Room had gotten them nowhere.

Steve was caught upon thinking of Bucky at every moment of the day with a fixation he couldn't remember having before, but he was thinking about work at the same pace. The combination of the two stressors – it wasn't a favourable mix.

"Welcome back to the land of happy people," Sam murmured just loud enough to be heard from the desk alongside Steve's.

Steve smiled without feeling as he watched the clutch of officers that were _finally_ leaving disappear behind the sliding doors of the elevator. "Happy people."

"You have any good news for us?"

Slowly, Steve drew his attention back towards Sam. He caught a glimpse of Tony throwing something at Rhodie as Rhodie made for Fury's partitioned office, and it seemed less of a helpful offering as a launched missile. Apparently the argument hadn't ceased with Rhodie's deliberate departure. He shook his head. "Nothing."

Sam was squinting at his computer screen as though his sleep-weary eyes struggled to discern the minute words depicted upon it. Likely they did; Sam hadn't gotten any more sleep than the rest of them in the past few days, and Steve stood testament to the fact that such an amount was very little.

More than tiredness, however, Sam looked frustrated. Always frustrated, and that frustration only mounted as he tapped at the keys of his keyboard with bandaged fingers. Steve had overheard him mutter more than once how he'd 'beat the crap out of the asshole who'd crushed his trigger finger', and Steve knew he would if he ever found out just who had done it. Just as he knew Steve himself would stop Sam from doing just that at all costs.

At Steve's reply, Sam briefly drew his gaze from his screen, from frowning at his fingers, towards him instead. "Could've guessed that. I could've told you it was pointless to go."

Steve bit back on the urge to sharply retort. He wasn't annoyed with Sam, even if his words did hint at the vague stupidly of visiting the observation room. _He's just tired and short-fused, like all of us,_ Steve reminded himself. "Yeah, I know. I would have likely spent my time better at the gym."

"Junkie," Sam muttered, though the quirk of his eyebrow and almost-nod was very telling. Steve wasn't the only one who'd intermittently pounded his agitation into a punching bag or the track of a treadmill over the past week.

"Maybe head down this afternoon?" Steve suggested, tipping his head back to gaze at the ceiling as a sharp clatter resounded from Bruce's lab. At least it was just Bruce winding down from his Hulk; Tony couldn't possible be the catalyst for he was even then thoroughly engrossed in whatever was on his computer as he further pockmarked his desk with distracted stabs of his pen. What looked like dried blueberries were absently making their way into his mouth with his other hand; Steve didn't think he even realised he was doing either motion.

Sam hummed, but before he could get a word out Thor was starting away from Fury's partition-office with a grumbled shout that was probably only so loud for the slight echoing effect of the basement. "I dislike what you insinuate, Officer Rhodes. I dislike it sincerely."

"I'll take that under advisement," Rhodie called from within Fury's office, and Thor didn't even glance over his shoulder as he retreated to where the rest of his squad was planted in the opposite corner of the room.

"What's that all about, then?" Steve asked quietly, tipping his head in their direction.

Sam blinked rapidly for a moment, as though regaining control of his visual senses before glancing to the Asgard Squad. "You mean Thor?"

"Mm."

"Chucking a shit, most likely."

"Why?"

Sam shrugged nonchalantly, but he replied nonetheless. "He and Rhodie had a bit of an argument this morning. About what's-his-name Loki. Rhodes isn't a confrontational type, and no one really has a spat with Loki, but…" He shook his head.

Steve understood. Rhodie wasn't a confrontational person at all. Not really, or at least not anymore. Tony, who had been Rhodie's friend even before he'd joined the force, always liked to preach of how he'd been more volatile as a younger man – the way he said 'younger' seemed to suggest Rhodie was now quite the opposite, but Rhodie always only rolled his eyes. But now he was different, apparently. More worldly. More understanding. More… rational.

Apparently, as with everyone else in SHIELD, high tensions and frustrations induced the urge for confrontation from even the rational members of their number. "Fair enough, I suppose," Steve said quietly.

"I'll say," Sam agreed, stretching his arms above his head. Then, with a heavy sigh, he turned back to his computer, returned to his squinting, and subsided once more.

Steve exhaled long and slow in his own kind of sigh before making his way to his desk. Dropping into the waiting chair, he fell back upon the files that he'd abandoned barely half an hour before for his visit to the observation room. It wasn't enjoyable work, and Steve would be the first to admit that he was more inclined to field work that the extensive desk hours that came as a part and parcel of the scene, but he endured it. They all did.

It wasn't quite mind-numbing work, required a degree of concentration, but as Steve had found himself becoming over the past week, he was distracted. Always distracted. Always thinking of the Red Room operation, of the fight and chasing down the HYDRA members who weren't giving them _anything_. He was always thinking about Bucky in that part of his mind that had been silent for so many years that he'd forgotten just how large it was.

Steve had analysed every aspect of their brief exchanges repeatedly over the past days. A by-product of his police training that was as much a detriment as a benefit was that he remembered so well. The expression – or lack-thereof in many instances – the words, the very feeling that thrummed through the air as they spoke.

The moments of crazed hastiness as he dragged Bucky from the middle of the fight towards the shadows alongside the road.

The moments of silence as he watched him in the cab.

The moments of heated contact, lips on lips, a passion Steve had never considered possible to share with Bucky but now seemed impossible _not_ to see. Had Steve simply never considered it before? Had he been so oblivious as to realise only when Bucky kissed him that such was even a possibility at all? Bucky had always been special, and even in his absence he'd remained just that. Now it was just a different kind of special.

Bucky was his friend. He was Steve's oldest friend, the oldest friend or family or… or whatever they were to one another, that Steve had. Steve cared for him in a way that went not beyond but along an entirely different route to how he did for any and everybody else. And Bucky was HYDRA.

For some reason, those facts didn't seem to erase one another, regardless of how much Steve's logic berated him for the conflict.

At first, Steve had been sceptical of Loki. Of Thor's loyalty to him and persistence that they could 'benefit from him' rather than pin him with a lawsuit and incarcerate him for the crimes that, as a member of a criminal organisation, he was irrevocably a part of. That had changed when Steve had seen Bucky for the first time and he thought he might, maybe, just a little bit, understand where Thor was coming from.

Now he knew. He knew for sure. The thought of locking Bucky behind bars, of chasing him down like the criminals of HYDRA Steve sought – it was inconceivable. Impossible. _Wrong_.

Steve hadn't realised he'd turned towards the Asgard Squad, towards Thor, until he made eye contact with the giant of a man. There was something challenging in Thor's stare, as though he expected Steve to voice his adherence to Rhodie's unheard claims in a way that Steve couldn't even contemplate agreeing to anymore. For some reason, it stung just a little that Thor would consider it.

Disregarding his paperwork, Steve rose to his feet. He didn't speak to Sam as he spared him the briefest of glances, nodded distractedly to Nat where she stood firmly unmoving as she'd likely been for hours, and tuned out the rapid Romanian that Wanda barked into her phone. He paused a measured distance from the Squad and he waited.

Thor saw him, Steve knew. He'd watched him approach before turning briefly back towards his Squad and murmuring in at a volume that Steve was surprised he could manage for its quietness. Steve could barely hear the sound of his words at all, much less what they were. Then, with the eyes of Sif, Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg trained upon them both, Thor took himself to Steve's side.

"You have something to say, Rogers?" he asked in his oddly regal tone. It might have been ridiculous to consider him an embodiment of a Norse God, but Steve doubted many could manage quite so well.

Steve maintained a neutral expression. It would be easy to pick a fight; Steve appreciated defending himself with his fists – it was often a far more honest encounter than the backhanded and slithering battle of verbal warfare – and he had a feeling that Thor would take him up on the possibility should Steve indicate his inclination. But he didn't. Steve didn't want that. He was tired, frustrated, and Thor's squad was likely equally so.

A fight wasn't what Steve was looking for.

"I just wanted a word," Steve said, quietly yet with no attempt to hide his words from the rest of SHIELD should they choose to listen.

Thor regarded him with a flat stare only vaguely curious. "A word? Then speak as much, should you have the desire."

 _Really, what's with the enunciation?_ Steve thought, even if it held no relevance to the situation. Weary minds often contemplated the unnecessary. "Loki," he said simply, and overlooked the sudden tension that rippled through the Asgard Squad. "I just wanted to say –"

"Take care how you speak."

" – that I appreciate what you're both doing. My understanding is that it's significantly more dangerous and difficult for the both of you than the force acknowledges." Steve tipped his head in a nod. "I wanted to thank you. Both of you."

For a moment, no one said a word. Not the Asgard Squad, and not SHIELD either. Steve was suddenly aware that even Wanda's voice had momentarily silenced, and, whether for his inevitable calming or for listening in, Bruce had too. Steve ignored the way Tony, visible on his periphery, twisted in his seat, just as he ignored the feeling of eyes upon him.

 _I'm not ashamed,_ he told himself, and found that, almost to his own surprise, he wasn't. _I'm not ashamed to be grateful to a criminal. He's conducting illicit activity that's wrong, but I'm not ashamed to appreciate his help._ Steve doubted he ever would be. Not after Bucky. Strange, how such a brief yet utterly huge thing had changed him in such a short time.

Thor regarded him with a frown that slowly, incrementally, smoothed into something less indignant and more contemplative. He tipped his head in a slight nod. "Thank you, Captain."

"You don't have to call me that," Steve said, allowing himself a faint smile at the nickname.

"Maybe it's warranted," Hogun said from behind him. "You'd make a good captain, I think."

"Thank you."

"I appreciate your words," Thor continued, and he nodded once more. "In such questionable times, even I…" He trailed off, pausing for a moment. Steve didn't have to wonder at what he had been about to say; the regret and agitation was written plainly upon his face. "But the operation was not a disaster. It was a success."

"It was," Steve agreed quietly. _It sort of was._

"And there will be more."

"Undoubtedly."

"And Loki – when he resurfaces, he will provide us with just the intelligence that we need to take down HYDRA and its drug-lords once and for all."

"And the rest," Fandral added, offering an acknowledging nod of his head towards Steve. Steve appreciated that; the Asgard Squad might be focused upon tamping down upon the drug-trafficking around the city, but that they were working alongside SHIELD and the rest of the NYPD was unquestionable. They were smaller sectors of something much larger. All of them were.

"I know we will," Steve said, and he felt like he spoke as much to convince himself as in simple agreement. "It's only a matter of time."

Thor regarded him for another moment, and it could have been Steve's imagination but he swore he saw something like approval in the man's eyes. Then he nodded curtly once more and, with an equally curt word in Swedish, he led his Squad towards the elevator. They disappeared in moments, all straight backs and striding steps. The silence that followed echoed resoundingly.

"Okay, so I knew you were understanding of him, Steve, but what the…?"

Steve glanced towards Clint where he'd half-raised himself from his seat to peer across the room towards him. As he did, it was impossible not to overlook that everyone else was turned his way. Without fail, everyone in the room stared; only Rhodie and Fury, silent behind their partition, were absented. Even Bruce had appeared in his doorway.

Steve wasn't ashamed, but he did feel the urge to explain himself even slightly. "We're working together. There's nothing wrong with supporting their efforts."

"Loki's still a criminal," Sam said slowly.

"I know he is."

"But?"

"But he's helping us."

"Even so, his past actions would still deem him a criminal," Vision said. He spoke as mild and detachedly as ever, even if his gaze where it rested upon Steve was sharply attentive.

Steve felt his lips thin. "He's helping us. That erases a degree of his crimes."

"There's laws installed to protect double agents and enactors of espionage," Nat said, eyeing Steve sidelong from where she still faced her corkboard.

"That doesn't necessarily make it right," Clint said.

"I can't say I entirely agree with your unspoken suggestion, Clint," Nat said, sliding her attention towards him in turn.

"It's no reflection upon you, Nat."

"Of course not."

"Your circumstances were different."

No one added anything to that. Not a one of them. Just like the source of Tony's PTSD, the tale of Wanda's brother and the birth of her hatred for firearms, and how Clint had lost his hearing, Nat's time as a double agent wasn't mentioned. She 'wasn't proud of what she'd done' was all she said, and she would rather the past remain firmly in the past where it belonged.

Yet even so, Steve felt himself speaking before he even realised he'd chosen to do so. "I don't want to judge people solely by their past actions, or by what they've been involved in. Everyone has a reason for acting as they do, even if it's criminal."

Sam's eyebrows snapped upwards. Wanda slowly dropped her feet from her desk. Vision blinked in a series of rapid flutters, and Nat actually turned from her corkboard. From his perch, Clint rose fully to his feet. "What are you -?"

"That's just my opinion, anyway," Steve said, and he had to lower his gaze. There wasn't shame, but he knew how he sounded nonetheless.

"Um… since when?" Tony asked.

Steve glanced towards him. Tony's expression was as incredulous as everyone else's was in their own way. "What do you mean?"

"You're Captain Righteous," Tony said, stepping slowly around his desk. Somehow, he managed not to look ridiculous holding his mangled pen and packet of blueberries. "Defender of the law, fighter of evil and all that jazz."

"Maybe I've just realised everything's not so black and white," Steve said.

"Because of Loki?" Clint asked slowly, and he didn't sound like he wholly believed it.

Steve shrugged anyway. It wasn't like anyone would be able to guess the real reason. "Something like that."

"Who are you and what've you done with Steve Rogers?" Sam asked, but he was smiling slightly. Incredulously, but still a smile. Out of everyone, Sam would be the one who most completely knew of Steve's deeply embedded beliefs. He would know what an about face it was.

"I guess he's had a change of heart," Steve said. "Or of perspective."

"Perspective," Nat echoed.

"Right," Tony said, and a glance his way found him shaking his head as he turned his regard down to his blueberries. "You don't have any HYDRA relatives stashed in that upstanding apartment of yours, now, do you? Double-crossing isn't how we work around here."

 _If only_ , Steve heard himself think before he'd even realised it. He heard it and realised it was absolutely true. It would be double-crossing, would be Wrong and Steve should feel guilty for wanting it, but he wanted it anyway.

Not that he would admit as much. Instead, he only forced a smile, striving to make it seem unforced, and shook his head. "Not quite, Tony."

"Hm," was all Tony said in reply before slouching back into his seat.

And just like that, the switch to return to normalcy seemed to have been flicked. Wanda replaced her feet on her desk, Vision returned to endlessly staring at his computer screen, and Nat slowly turned back to her corkboard. The sound of Bruce's silent retreat from momentary attendance followed Steve as he made his way back to his own desk, easing into his seat and dropping his fingers to the keyboard once more.

"You alright, Steve? Thought you'd get a good word in with the Norse Gods, hm?"

Steve didn't glance towards Sam at his words. He pressed his lips thinly for a moment before replying. "Have you ever reached a point where you question your –?"

"Commitment?"

"No," Steve said, shaking his head. "Never commitment. It's the perspective. Ever thought that everything isn't as cut-and-dry as it once was?"

Sam was quiet for a moment, and Steve added a typed sentence of achingly dry observation to his graphic analysis before he continued.

"It's never been cut and dry, Steve," Sam murmured.

"Yeah, I'm realising that."

"Pity."

Steve glanced his way. Sam was frowning at his screen but Steve was afforded the impression the frown was meant for him. "A pity? That I've realised? How so?"

Sam shook his head. He clicked at a key that must have been more of an aimless jab than an inputting direction. "Just that it makes it easier to think that way. I always kind of envied that you could do that, Steve. Makes things…"

"Easier," Steve said quietly. He could definitely understand that. Even so, Steve knew he wouldn't want to change it. He couldn't. Not with Bucky involved.

The day dragged, and yet at the same time it was over too fast. There were mountains of work and yet it was mind-numbing. Steve wasn't a bookish person, despite what his grades at school might have suggested. Years of bedridden dedication to studies had paved the way, but it hardly left him as a model theoretician. Steve was itching to move, to do _something_ , and the added weight of Bucky's absence that had been pressing on him all week only made it worse.

He could do nothing. Not to pursue HYDRA, despite their recent success, nor to find Bucky. He didn't even know where to start looking.

A bout of sparring and weights at the gym alongside Sam – and Nat, and Clint and Wanda when they heard of their intentions – eased a little of their communal tension, but scrubbing up to leave Central at nearly ten o'clock found the niggling agitation welling within Steve once more. HYDRA. Bucky. Right and wrong, black and white. Sam was accurate in that regard, at least. It was certainly a whole lot easier when Steve didn't have to justify every passing thought. Sometimes there simply was no justifying. It just was.

Steve had never had that happen to him before.

"You're leaving?" Sam said as, stuffing his towel into his bag, Steve rose to his feet to leave the change room. "Heading home?"

"Heading home," Steve said with a nod.

"Glad to hear it," Sam said, satisfaction planting a smile on his lips. "Although Tony might be a little put-out that he won't get the chance to conduct an intervention. Who'd have thought you could pick yourself up all on your own?"

"Who indeed," Steve murmured, slinging his bag over his shoulder. He turned to leave, waving a hand to Clint in farewell.

"Steve?" Sam called from behind him, drawing him to a pause. His consideration was deeply contemplative as Steve glanced back towards him. "You sure you're okay?"

 _Not really_ , Steve didn't say, and he nodded. "I'm fine. Just thinking."

"Watch yourself," Clint said from across the room. "Too much brain activity can be damaging for the system."

"I think there might be something questionable to that," Sam said with a shake of his head. Then he pinned Steve with his stare once more. "I'll see you tomorrow."

It was a statement rather than a question, almost an order, and Steve took it as one. "Yeah. See you. Say hi to your girlfriend for me."

"We've been through this, she's not my girlfriend," Sam called after him as he left the changing rooms.

"Very close friend, then," Steve replied over his shoulder.

"An intimately close friend," Clint added.

"Shut up the pair of you."

Steve found himself smiling as he stepped through the doors. It was true that his co-workers of SHIELD – Sam, Nat, even Tony though he might pretend to object – were approving of his returning home. They took it as a sign that he was balancing his life and work.

Steve didn't correct them. He didn't state that, instead of balancing, it was more out of a sore and desperate hope that he return to his apartment. That hope grew less and less hopeful and more enriched by desperation every passing day. Bucky knew where he lived, and since Steve didn't know where _Bucky_ was, he could only hope that he might at some point return of his own volition.

The prospect dwindled in possibility with each passing day. Steve didn't know what to do, and he couldn't do anything without alerting someone to his activities. He'd considered abusing the police system, but he wasn't _that_ far gone. Not yet, anyway.

He would wait. For a time. An increasingly less amount of time, if his desperation was any indication. What exactly did it mean when, hypothetically, one's childhood friend, disappeared for years, appeared out of nowhere as one's silently sworn enemy? What did it meant when they shared a kiss that was at once hungry and warm and longingly arousing and then left straight after?

Steve didn't have anyone to ask such questions of, and he considered that, even if he did, they might be just a little telling.

His apartment was dark when he entered. Dark, and lonely, and as stagnant as he'd left it. Steve idly flicked on the lights, dropping his bag beside the front door and absently drawing his phone from his pocket. The thing about SHIELD was that, even spending all day with one another, one or other of them – usually Tony, or Vision for his constant presence on the internet, or Wanda for her own consistency – would have something more to say. The smattering of messages that were a common sight on their communal chat wasn't a surprise to Steve as he swiped through them.

He read as he kicked his shoes off.

He barely heeded Clint's arrival into the written conversation as he passed down the dim hallway.

He rubbed a hand across his tired eyes before reaching for the light switch just inside his bedroom.

And he paused.

Steve's apartment was empty. It was dark, lonely, and stagnant – most of the time. It was so much of the time, in fact, that on the occasions it wasn't Steve felt the intrusion in the very walls of the suite.

He felt it then. Even before he turned on the light into his bedroom, he felt it. It was a struggle not to gasp, to lurch into the room and leap towards the intruder.

"Bucky?"

Steve's voice sounded loud in his own ears. The apartment was dark, was lonely, and above all else it was silent. Steve didn't usually speak to himself, so the sound of his own voice breaking through that silence was even more profound for its foreignness. Not that he cared. Not that he cared for a second because –

"I didn't get the chance to invite you back," Steve said, speaking into the shadows of his room, towards the presence that he couldn't see but knew was there. "To maybe even the playing field and make it on mutual terms this time." He paused, and Steve couldn't even hear the whisper of a breath. His eyes trained on the barest sliver of streetlight that managed to creep through his closed blinds.

He knew it was him. He knew it was Bucky. Unless he was imagining, which Steve sorely hoped he wasn't. He felt his hands curl into fists at the thought. _Don't let it be my imagination. I'm not insane yet, am I?_

He didn't ask that. Not yet, anyway. Instead, because he knew that he would be illuminated by the hallway light even if Bucky wasn't, he nodded at the window. "You're climbing through windows now too, then?"

There was another stretch of silence, and for a long moment Steve didn't think Bucky would speak at all. Then, quietly, in barely more than a murmur, he did. "If we're talking about breaking and entering through windows, you did that first."

Steve fought the urge to laugh. Bucky _did_ remember. Steve didn't know why he considered that fact so important, but that Bucky verbally acknowledged any aspect of their shared past was heartening. And not once but twice, too. Steve had kept his scrawled note. "I'll wear that one."

"At least I went out the window first before inviting myself in. And I left you a note."

"I guess I deserve that, too."

"You do."

Steve swallowed. He didn't know whether to be ecstatic or terrified, or maybe even a little angry. Probably a mixture of all three. They roiled and twisted inside of him and bubbled forth as a single question. "Why did you leave?"

A sound that could have been a laugh as much as a sigh rippled across the room. "You did that first too, Stevie."

 _A different kind of leaving, though._ Steve had to bite his lip to withhold the urge to say just that. "I guess I deserve that, too," he murmured, if with less sincerity this time.

"Maybe," Bucky said quietly. "Maybe not."

Steve couldn't see across the room. He couldn't see into the shadows, and the light behind him blinded him further. And yet he found he couldn't bring himself to flick on the light either. It didn't feel right to do so. For whatever reason, it just didn't feel right. Rather than glaringly exposing, Steve innately felt that Bucky might just stay for longer if he remained in the darkness alongside him. If he didn't interrupt that darkness with professions of justice and probing questions.

So he didn't say anything else. Steve didn't flick the light switch either. With a single step into the room, he left the brightness of the hallway behind him. He closed the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you, dear reader, for sticking with this story so far!   
> Like all struggling writers, I thrive off of comments like a plant guzzling sunlight. Please, please, PLEASE leave a comment to let me know your thoughts!! I'd really appreciate just about any feedback!


	6. Chapter 6

_Touch was such a simple sensation. Or simple in principle, anyway. The brush of fingers over skin, the smoothing of a palm over the curve of flesh, the flick of hair from a forehead._

_Simple touches, yet the weight that drove them could be anything but._

_For Steve, he had always acted wholly. He'd always committed himself – to his decisions, to his actions, to his emotions. There was no in-between. There was no grey in his black and white. That had changed after Dogend Docks. It had changed even more after the Red Room. It changed when he slowly, slowly, dawned to the realisation that grey_ did _exist. More than that, it would seem that white and black weren't quite as wholesome as he'd always thought. If anything, it was the white, the black, that struggled for existence. Greyness was everywhere. It was pervasive in its shades._

_Steve would still do Right. He would still be Good. He just wasn't entirely convinced that his understanding of Right and Good were accurate anymore._

_A touch, however - that was a commitment. There was no greyness in a touch; it was either contact or none, feeling or nothing. A shadow of brushing fingers wasn't the real thing. All or nothing: that was what Steve liked about it._

_What he liked about it even more, however…_

_Skin was warm. The touches were gentle then hard, firm and then loosened. The graze of fingernails over Steve's cheek became familiar but it still elicited the barest of shivers. The slide of a hand around his neck, dragging through his hair and pulling him –_ closer, closer still _– was breathtaking. The tightening of muscle beneath Steve's own fingers as he hooked them into a belt, as he locked them around a waist that was wrapped maddeningly in combat gear and then blessedly wasn't, was aching. The kiss…_

_The kisses were, perhaps, the best. Sometimes they were a mere touch – the committed touch that left no room for greyness. Yet other times they were fast and hard and almost desperate, a sucking of lips and tongue and teeth and the taste so intoxicating that Steve longed for the briefest hint of it in the hours of its absence._

_Those kisses weren't gentle. They weren't tender or tentative. Passion was a crackling fire, one that Steve realised had always flickered if in a different kind of light._

_How hadn't he even considered how much he could want Bucky? For that… the world was full of greys, Steve was discovering, but that? There was no in between. Steve was still deciding whether it was a black or a white kind of want, and yet at the same time he found…_

_He didn't care. For once, Steve didn't really care at all._

* * *

Operation Red Room became a date to remember. As often happened in hindsight, the flaws and errors grew less remarkable with distance and time to blur memory.

Steve remembered them. He remembered the wrongs and the slips, the accidents and the nearlys. He'd written enough damn reports on them, after all. Still, he marked the date just as every other SHIELD officer did. Just as every other NYPD officer did, too. The night of the Red Room had changed everything, after all.

Everything. Absolutely everything.

Missions eventually began flooding through SHIELD's doors thick and fast. Intel from the resurfaced Loki, and then not from Loki, because the apprehended members of HYDRA weren't snakeheads but they still spoke. They still knew. It would have been more remarkable had so many of the serpentine underlings _not_ known even the slightest hint and held their tongues throughout the rigorous questioning.

Which it was. Very rigorous. SHIELD might be the most adamant, but they were far from the only members of the NYPD who wanted HYDRA gone.

As the questioning arose and slowly, gradually, flooded with successful plucking, the missions rose with them. Before the end of the second week, they had a lead. A damn-good lead, too. Before the end of the second week, SHIELD broke into an undercover club and apprehended the culprits hosting a crypt of drug trafficking. A flood of cash, cocaine and the unauthorised weaponry in the hands of pseudo bodyguards were taken into possession.

That, and the figure of Jeoffrey Houston. Steve knew his name even before the bust. There was something even more fiercely satisfying about apprehending a _known_ criminal. This time, they knew they'd struck gold.

"He's not going to cave," Clint said from Steve's side as they watched the hollow, glaring-eyed Houston stare death at the questioner across from him. "Not yet, anyway."

"To my knowledge, Ms Ayre is remarkably persistent," Vision said from Clint's other side. He had for once dragged himself away from his computer and stood stoically tall and unmoving barely a foot from the one-way mirror.

"Have you read her file, then?" Wanda asked from over Steve's shoulder.

"I don't need to in order to know her success rate. Everyone knows that." A pause, then, "but as it happens, yes, I have."

Clint snorted.

"She's certainly fun to watch," Nat murmured from Steve's shoulder. He glanced her way and she shot him her typical sidelong glance, lips twitching. "Definitely more so than paperwork."

"You start saying things like that, Nat, and I'll almost believe you didn't like the paperwork," Sam said.

"Perish the thought."

As it happened, Houston did crack. Not profusely and not for a long while, but crack he did. By the time he ground out a name, a number, a location, SHIELD had infiltrated two more undercover clubs. The apprehended O'Reilly and Curtin were less resistant that Houston.

"I could get used to this," Tony said, propped on the edge of Rhodie's desk the morning after Curtin had been dragged into holding. He should have been at his desk, completing out the obligatory paperwork like Clint, and Vision, and Wanda, and even Bruce were doing, but Steve didn't blame him for his momentary pause. He didn't blame him for a second. "Much more to my pace."

"You're not a fan of researching followed hit-and-miss, Tony?" Rhodie asked, smirking as he glanced up from his computer.

"Are you kidding me? That's Nat's field of expertise."

"I resent this continued joke," Nat said, drifting from the coffee machine with a flat glance spared Tony's way.

Tony raised a hand. "Just speaking the truth. You and Pepper –"

"Don't bring Pepper into this again, Tony," Rhodie said, though he was still smirking just short of a smile. "The fact that you even utilise her expertise after she's withdrawn from the force is practically criminal."

"Hey, she's good at what she does," Tony said, lazily folding his arms over his chest and leaning backwards to half block Rhodie's screen. "Her talents are wasted being Dep CEO."

"Such a trivial position," Wanda said, seemingly to herself, as she lounged at her own desk.

"Can't deny that," Rhodie said, trying and failing to lean around Tony's obscuring presence. "I've respected her ever since –"

"The Watershore Case?"

"That's the one."

"You know it was me who wrote the follow up that Fury used, right?"

"What?"

"Yeah, that was me."

"No it wasn't, Pepper would –"

"Hey, I'm good at what I do to. Don't underestimate me."

Rhodie sighed, shaking his head, and it was a testament to the general flip in humour from good to bad that he smiled rather than scowled. "Never that. We need smart-asses on this team or we'd get nothing done."

"Which one of us are you referring to exactly, Rhodes?" Sam asked.

It was further testament to that good-humour that they all laughed. There was actual laughter in the SHIELD basement, even if it was followed almost immediately by bowed heads, a smattering of phone calls, an influx of officers from higher floors as they pervaded their midst with reports, and queries, and samples dropped off and picked up from Bruce's office. For that was the way of it; the ambiance was lighter in their midst, but the workload…

If anything, it had increased to double-time since Operation Red Room. And Steve basked in it.

They worked till all hours and staggered from the basement home when they managed it, but Steve loved it.

There was danger, weapons pointed and brawls and the threat of paper cuts from far too many files exchanging hands, but Steve loved that, too.

They were getting somewhere. They were finally making headway with HYDRA, and Steve didn't care that it was exhausting. He didn't care that extra hands were called upon until their number of operatives doubled, tripled, further expanded with the expansive forces of the Asgard Squad's back-up crew. Sporadically filled desks flooded the basement scene, and there was a near constant buzz of noise, questions called, orders given, and hypotheses stated.

Steve loved it all. It was exhausting, mind-numbing at times, but he loved it because he was finally doing something. He was doing Right.

That Right almost, _almost_ made him forget about the very, very wrong that he allowed himself every other night. But then that wasn't really Wrong, was it? Even as dark as he came, Bucky was never Wrong _._

* * *

_"A question for a question."_

_"Is this going to become a thing now?"_

_Steve bit back a frown. "Did you not want to talk at all?" When Bucky didn't reply, he nudged him with a gentle word. "Bucky?"_

_"Talking could be problematic," Bucky replied, voice low and little more than a murmur._

_Steve swallowed. Bucky seemed inclined to answer in loaded replies. They meant something, those words. Something that Steve doubted he would be able to unveil even if he asked question after question. "Because you can't or because you won't?"_

_"Both," Bucky replied shortly. It could have been Steve's imagination, an impression of the past-Bucky drawn over that of the present, but he thought he could hear, could almost see through the darkness, the way Bucky dropped his chin in impudent resistance._

_It frustrated Steve just a little. Just a little, because it flooded him with longing, too._ I want to know you. I want to talk to you. _"But kissing is fine," he said instead. "Sex is fine –"_

_"Different," Bucky interrupted him and Steve drew up short._

_"What?"_

_"It's different. A different kind of personal."_

_Steve swallowed again. "So if I ask –?"_

_The slightest hint of a sigh pervaded the darkness. "Let's face it, Steve, you're going to ask."_

_The flicker of frustration arose once more._ Not if you don't want me to. _"If I was going to ask, would you answer me?"_

_"A question for a question," Bucky said promptly. Quietly._

_"That seems fair," Steve said, bowing his head slightly. He could handle that. He would have to be clever, but he could do that._

_"There's no such thing as fairness," Bucky said with a different kind of lowness this time. "There just is."_

_Steve was only aware of the depth of his frown because physically strained his brow. "That doesn't make any sense," he said, because it didn't. Bucky had always played with words in the past, but he'd never been quite so cryptic._

_"Maybe not to you," Bucky replied._

_It didn't make sense either. Not with such a minimal explanation. But Steve would accept it. For now. "Alright, then. A question for a question."_

* * *

Bucky was as much a problem for Steve as he was a solution. And yet, at the same time, he was neither one of those things. Bucky was never and could never be a problem, and could never, would never, be something so simple as a solution.

He was Bucky. There would always be more to him than just that. Steve hadn't fully appreciated it until the night before he'd disappeared when they were kids. He'd never fully appreciated it until Bucky disappeared and left a sea of unanswered questions in his wake, the ripples of obscurity as elusive as they were tantalising.

Steve knew so little about Bucky. He wanted to know more. But first and foremost, he wanted to know why he'd come back that first night.

"That's your first question?" Bucky asked as, in the darkness of Steve's bedroom, a darkness that Steve's eyes couldn't pervade yet he felt he could see through nonetheless, he stared. Steve knew he stared. He could feel the weight of his gaze, that unblinking stare that had rested upon him but days before and the memory of which Steve had felt upon him ever since.

"That's my first question. Is that yours?"

Bucky made a sound that could have been a laugh but likely wasn't. Steve didn't know if this Bucky could laugh quite so easily as he once had. "Speaking of fairness."

"It was a joke."

"I know. I'm not so far removed from casual teasing that I don't know that much. Fuck, my life's not _that_ depressing."

Steve wanted to ask about that. At every breath that passed from Bucky's lips, he wanted to ask another question in return. There was weight behind Bucky's words, and Steve wanted to know. If it wasn't _that_ depressing, how bad was it? Just what kind of a life was it? The usual torrent of nagging questions arose.

_Where have you been?_

_Who have you been with?_

_Why are you with HYDRA?_

_What happened to your arm?_

But Steve bit them back. One step at a time. He wouldn't push for more than that, because to push would mean that Bucky would leave.

Bucky didn't leave at his first question, but he didn't truly answer it either. Not as Steve wanted it answered. The phrase, "Because I wanted to," was one that Steve grew all too familiar with.

"Why did you leave?"

"Because I wanted to."

"Why did you come back again?"

"Obviously, because I wanted to do that, too."

"Will you come back again?"

"If I want to."

It didn't really make sense to Steve. _Wanting_ he understood, but why now? Why all of a sudden, after fourteen years of ignoring the possibility that his childhood friend might be dead, did Bucky appear again and again? Always through the window, too, which Steve didn't understand. He didn't know how Bucky made it up to the second floor time and time again. He didn't know why he didn't just use the front door like any other human being.

Or at least Steve wondered at first. Over time, as days dribbled together, as nights mingled and Steve would have lost track of those days in the basement had he not made the concerted effort to return to his apartment, he stopped wondering why. Because Bucky was different to how Steve remembered him, and using a window instead of a door, clinging to the shadows and staring with watchful intent, was just one more thing.

Steve's life had turned on its head. For HYDRA, it was a step in a hopeful direction – a giant of a _leap_ in just that direction – and for Bucky it was a sudden fall into cold water and the irrepressible drifting that followed. Both changes were vast and both were unstoppable. Both Steve embraced and clung to with all of his strength.

Steve never really did learn why Bucky came to his apartment. After the first questions, the first night of questions, he didn't ask anymore. Bucky was oddly cryptic, and he wouldn't waste those precious questions and the equally precious time that they stood together in the shadows of his bedroom.

Even less so when, as Steve finally paused on the tail end of yet another question – "You were alright? After the other night, when you got hit?" to the reply of "Obviously" – Bucky regarded him with watchful eyes that Steve felt as much as saw.

"So that makes sixteen," Bucky said.

Steve frowned. "Sixteen?"

"Sixteen questions are mine."

Steve blinked. He hadn't even been counting, and he admitted to himself in hindsight that his disgruntlement for Bucky's elusive replies had been somewhat distracting. "Oh. Yes. Fair is fair."

"Not fair," Bucky said flatly. "Just is."

"Right," Steve said with a nod. He didn't know why Bucky was adamant about that, why it even bothered him so much, but he wouldn't argue. "What would you like to ask?"

Bucky didn't ask. He didn't say a word, simply crossing the room towards Steve and standing before where Steve sat on the end of his bed atop his pale duvet. He stood so close that Steve was all but blinded by the darker shadow of him, could feel the warmth of his body radiating upon him. Then a hand reached, curled into his hair, and tipped Steve's head back just slightly. Steve let himself be turned.

"Do you mind?" Bucky asked.

He said it as one would with indignation. The tone was the same: _"Do you mind getting out of the way?" "Do you mind going now?" "Do you mind leaving me alone?"_ And yet Steve heard it as something else. There was something there, something curious and slow, something almost hesitant, and Steve revelled in it without quite knowing what it meant. Bucky stood tall and strong and powerful, dangerous and deadly before him, and yet Steve didn't feel threatened. He felt anything but.

"No," he said simply.

That was enough for Bucky. It was enough of an answer to the question that dropped their discrepancy from sixteen to fifteen. Bucky's knees brushed against Steve, his fingers tightened in their hold, the warmth of his body intense, and then the lick of his breath on Steve's lips preceded a kiss itself. Chaste, just as the very first had been, but only briefly. Only for a second, and then it was deep, and fierce, and Steve's scalp hurt from the tugging on his hair but he didn't care. His hands rose to clasp – waist, belt, arms, anything – to hold him closer.

Bucky let him. Some detached part of Steve's mind that was still lucid, that could still think past _lips, hot, wet,_ registered that meant something. Not now, though. To be considered not now, but later.

That was how it was. Steve never saw Bucky but for in his own apartment, something that he was by turns relieved for and unnerved by. Bucky was a member of HYDRA and Steve needed to do something about that – something that was drifting less from 'prevent others from finding out' to 'how do I get him out?' He didn't ask that question, however. He didn't ask, because he didn't think Bucky would tell him. He didn't think he'd want to hear the answer that would be given instead.

That was how it was. Bucky came to him. Not every night, but often, and it was enough incentive that, regardless of how late and the benefit to his schedule sleeping at the basement would offer, Steve made sure he returned. It didn't go unnoticed, either. Far from it, in fact.

"Don't tell me you're finally getting your life together, Cap," Tony said, tossing a stress ball between his hands as he watched Steve pack away his work for the night. Tony never seemed to actually do any of his work, but somehow still managed to get it done. Steve was yet to learn quite how he managed that.

Glancing up from his computer where it rapidly blinked into sleep, Steve found not only Tony but Sam, Nat, a curious Wanda, and Bruce beside Nat's desk turned towards him. The absence of the rest of SHIELD wasn't unexpected; it was late, after all.

Shrugging, Steve ducked behind the safety of his desk for a moment to snatch up his rucksack. "Something like that."

"Oh, hey now, that's not fair," Tony said, pushing himself from his chair. "You're not allowed to get a life at the same time everything clicks into place with work."

"Really?" Steve asked. "Why not?"

"Haven't you heard of the seesaw effect? Shit home life equals a promotion?"

"I think you might perhaps be mispronouncing the quotation," Wanda said, dropping her chin onto a raised palm as she glanced in Tony's direction.

"I never mispronounce."

"Is that so, Steve?" Nat said quietly, contemplatively. Nat was always quietly contemplative to the verge of suspicious. About everything, good and bad. "Well, that's a step."

"In the right direction," Wanda added.

"Definitely."

Steve glanced between the two of them. "What's all this about?"

Tony drifted towards Steve's desk and plopped himself on the edge. "The fact that you've never had a life outside of work in the entire six years you've been here, newbie, and yet now you've grown one from nowhere." He waved the stress ball in Steve's direction. "Suspicious."

"A good kind of suspicious, though," Sam said. He was trying and failing to smother his smile. "You not telling us something, Steve?"

Steve drew his gaze around the lot of them, catching a glimpse of the clock hanging from the far wall as he did. "Aren't I entitled to some privacy?"

"Not at all," Nat said immediately.

"Not a chance," Tony said at almost the exact same moment.

"We are, as I believe you would call it, busy-bodies," Wanda said with a smile of.

"So what is it?" Sam asked, drifting towards Steve's desk with the same deceptively casual stroll Tony had adopted moments before. "You're not telling me –"

"I'm not telling you anything," Steve said, slinging his bag over his shoulder. _Not a chance in hell_.

"But we can guess?" Tony asked. "Just a nod or a head shake. That's all I'm asking for."

"We are busy-bodies, Steve," Wanda said through a low chuckle. "There's no avoiding it."

"I think you'll find there is," Steve said, making his way towards the elevator. Eleven o'clock meant that Bucky would be at his apartment if he was coming at all. Steve didn't know what time he arrived there exactly, but he was always there by the time Steve returned.

"I don't think there's much need for guessing," Nat said, raising her voice to chase after him. "Which is it, Steve? And old one or someone new?"

Steve dropped his gaze to his toes and didn't speak a word in reply, but he felt himself smile nonetheless. Nat was a perceptive one. She always dubbed Clint their hawk-eye, but she saw just as far in his opinion.

"Wait, so –" Sam began, then cut himself off. "Oh, fuck no, seriously? You didn't tell me? Is it what's-his-name, from the Academy?"

Steve shook his head, still not glancing over his shoulder. "No."

"The other one, then. The girl, um – Shaza, right? Sharon?"

"No," Steve repeated pressing the elevator button. The doors chimed open. As he turned to face the doors it was to see four pairs of eyes in a range of curious, knowing and smugly satisfied expressions staring after him. They really were busy-bodies.

"And you tease me for having a girlfriend," Sam said, shaking his head.

"Never that," Steve replied.

"I'll get it out of you, Rogers," Tony said. The way he tossed the stress ball between his hands made it almost a challenge. "Just wait and see. I'm very good at guessing."

"Not this time," Steve said, and the elevator doors closed before Tony could reply.

No one would guess. No one would find out, because Steve would make sure of it. He cared for Bucky so dearly, had always cared for him, and a part of him longed to let the world know that he had him back again. But he couldn't do that. Not when Bucky was a part of HYDRA. Not when Steve was a part of SHIELD.

It made for something of a sticky situation, but Steve wouldn't give it up for the world.

There weren't always questions in their trysts. Sometimes there was barely a word exchanged at all, and not only because Bucky revisited his first question with speed and fervour that Steve entirely supported. He couldn't get enough of losing himself in kisses that were at times just short of aggressive, of pressing himself against Bucky in a way he never had before but sorely wished he had done, because he clearly hadn't known what he was missing. Of tasting Bucky on his lips, of feeling the tell-tale hardness of arousal that mirrored his own. Of hands tugging at belts and yanking at waistbands.

Of how the first time Bucky went down on him he knew, _knew,_ it was different to anyone else he'd been with.

Why in God's name hadn't he ever considered such a thing before?

And yet sometimes they didn't even do that. Sometimes they didn't ask questions, though Steve simply wanted to know – _where have you been, why didn't you return, couldn't you have at least let me know you were alright?_ – and instead simply sat.

It had been a long time since they'd done that. A long, long time, of half a city and a hospital admission later. Steve remembered those comfortable silences; he'd cherished the memory of them for years. It was perhaps the one thing that was just the same as how Steve recalled it. For that as much as everything else, as much as feeling Bucky, of holding onto his and knowing that he _could_ and he _wanted to_ , Steve was grateful.

* * *

 _Bucky, it would seem, had something of a tendency to seat himself near windows. Steve didn't know why. He didn't know if sometimes Bucky simply wanted to deliberately place the distance between them, a distance placed when Steve seated himself on the end of his bed. It could just as likely been because he felt more comfortable with an escape route so close nearby. Steve had never actually seen Bucky leave through the window – and not through lack of trying; he'd just never been able to_ see _it happen – but it could be a possibility._

_Although, Bucky never truly seemed uncomfortable. Not really. He was steady and in control in a way that went above and beyond even his casual composure of youth._

_That night was one in which they didn't speak. Not a single word was exchanged, Bucky simply seating upon the windowsill with foot wedged against the other side of the frame. When Steve entered the room, he sensed without being told that it was going to be such a night. It was likely much the same way that Bucky must have sensed the days when, in their childhood, the sickly Steve hadn't been up to the task of speaking._

_Bucky wasn't sick. Or at least, Steve didn't think he was sick. He just clearly didn't want to talk._

_Perhaps Steve should have slept. It would have been the sensible thing to do, and after a rigorously dry day at the office scouring through computer files years old in the hopes of finding a lead on one briefly mentioned Zola_ _from Loki's brief correspondences, he needed it. But he couldn't. Not when Bucky sat as he did, still and silent and simply there. Steve had always been aware of Bucky when he stood at his side, for Bucky had always been the kind of person to be aware of._

_He wasn't the bright and carefree boy he'd once been, or the sarcastically teasing teenager, but there was that something about him still. It didn't matter that Steve hadn't really seen him really smile. Steve was still drawn to him, his gaze constantly resting upon the dark smear that was all he could see of him. Or maybe that was just Steve himself. Maybe, perhaps, he'd always simply been more aware of Bucky than other people._

_It warranted some thought, and instead of thinking of HYDRA and SHIELD, instead of considering the meeting the next day that would include the Asgard Squad and a dozen other recruited officers, Steve thought of Bucky. He thought, and he watched in the silence that was somehow more comfortable than their questioning exchanges. Steve had learned from their weeks of dancing exchanges what questions to avoid – HYDRA, for one, and Bucky's arm, for another – but they were still somehow stilted._

_Bucky didn't leave before morning. Not that day. The open blinds into Steve's bedroom admitted first the dreary pre-dawn glow, then the darkness that followed again before slowly, smoothly, the glimpse of the morning._

_And Steve stared._

_Bucky had always been attractive. First it was with his boyish enthusiasm. Then it was with his youthful charm. Then the infectious merriment just short of swagger and the charisma to match perfectly. He'd always been handsome, even, Steve registered, and he remembered the nurses at his hospital saying as much._

_"Two beautiful boys," the nurse who Steve vaguely remembered to be called Polly – or Dolly? – had said. "Such beautiful boys, the pair of you."_

_For Bucky, at least, she had been entirely correct. It was in his smile that lit up the room, even if Steve hadn't glimpsed that smile in so, so long. It was in the darkness of his beautiful eyes that remained large and dark and deeply secretive even as he grew older. He even possessed an impressive physique that seemed to grow on him naturally in a way that Steve had envied just a little and admired all the more. Long-legged, tall, large hands that were somehow gentle and long fingers just as much._

_It was true that he didn't have the casually artful scruff of hair anymore, exchanged for overlong hair almost lank, and the youthful boyishness of clean cheeks was gone. But the handsomeness was still there. The easy grace of him remained, in the way he sat, unmoving, foot propped as it had been for hours. In was even present in the barest curl of his left hand where it hung loosely into space at his side._

_It was true too that he didn't smile, and there was a darkness of stumble to his cheeks, but the angular features where still there. The features that_ had _smiled. Steve stared in the morning light as he couldn't help but doing whenever given the chance. He'd always known that Bucky was handsome – he just hadn't fully realised what that meant to Steve himself._

_Some silent alarm chimed before the sun had crested the horizon. Some trigger that urged Bucky from his silent staring out the window at the cars that Steve could hear but not see from his bed. Turning slowly and yet somehow without stiffness, he glanced towards Steve. And he stared right back at him – that unblinking, intent stare that Steve knew could have been dangerous, had been dangerous when Bucky had a knife in his hand, and yet… wasn't. Not then._

_"Are you leaving?" Steve asked, and, despite his attempt at quietness, the sound of his own voice was jarring in the silence of the room._

_Bucky stared for a moment longer, and for that moment Steve felt himself being assessed. Analysed. As though every part of him was being committed to memory for reasons he couldn't be sure. "Is that one of your questions?" Bucky murmured in reply._

_Steve felt himself smile. "I don't think so. You're already overrunning me with the number in your inventory."_

_"Seventy-four," Bucky said with a single nod. He didn't smile, but somehow Steve felt a touch of amusement from him anyway._

_"Damn, that many?" Steve said, shaking his head. "No, I don't think it will be one of my questions." Then he rose to his feet._

_Bucky never asked him to leave the room to allow him to disappear. He didn't need to. Somehow, despite wanting anything but, Steve knew that to stay would be to push a boundary that Bucky wouldn't allow to be trespassed across. Their relationship, if that was what it could be called, existed on an invisible plane; Steve didn't know how steady it was, how stable or durable. He didn't know if the barest passing wind could shatter it. The fact that Bucky was of HYDRA and Steve of SHIELD meant something, something big, and Steve wouldn't push at any other weakened joints for the possibility of urging that single fracture to splinter further._

_So he rose and crossed the room to Bucky's side. Once, at the beginning, weeks and weeks before, Steve wouldn't have dared. He wouldn't have approached because one, Bucky_ had _thrown a knife at him barely months before, and two, he didn't want to give him any more reasons for flight. But that had passed, and Steve knew innately that this, at least, Bucky would allow._

_They didn't say anything; neither Steve nor Bucky. Not when Steve stopped before him. Not when he reached a hand up to the side of Bucky's head and slipped his fingers through the overlong tresses as he'd been given the chance to do numerous times before. Not when Steve leant towards him and dropped a lingering kiss upon his lips just because he could._

_Then he stepped backwards. He released his hold on Bucky even if he didn't want to, and he turned, even if he really, really didn't want to. He left the room._

_Steve passed through the hallway. He entered the kitchen. He threw a stack of toast slices into the toaster and detachedly made himself a cup of coffee. To the sound of the kettle boiling, he paused, glanced back towards his bedroom, and made the short trip back again._

_Bucky was gone._

_It wasn't unexpected. In fact, Steve would have been more surprised had Bucky still remained on his windowsill. But it still hurt just a little. Too many times Bucky had left him._

_Steve wished he'd never set the precedent all those years ago. He wished he could return to his childhood self and tell him not to stop visiting his best friend at the hospital that first time around. For whatever reason, even more than when he'd left Bucky in his own apartment years later, Steve felt like that was where it had all started._

_Sighing, he turned from his empty bedroom. After a whole night awake and staring into the darkness, he was going to need a lot of coffee._

* * *

It was bound to happen. Eventually, it was always going to happen. Steve attempted to distance himself from those he apprehended, from attending lawsuits when he could avoid it, because being on the inside as a field officer meant that to do so wasn't only stupid; it was dangerous.

For Steve, for everyone in SHIELD dealing with high profile and potentially deadly criminals, to show his face was deadly dangerous.

To say Steve was surprised to get jumped on his way home would have been an exaggeration. To say he was surprised to turn around after parking his motorbike two blocks from Charleston Street to find a dark figure standing far too close would also be an exaggeration.

Steve wasn't surprised. He didn't have the time for surprise.

Reacting instinctively – always instinctively – Steve was throwing himself backwards as soon as the burly figure in blacks and smeared greys leaped towards him. He ducked a swinging fist – _didn't think_ – spun on his toes, rolled across his dropped knee – _no thinking_ – and sprung upright with a lurch, fists raised. From zero and calm to tense and thrumming with electric energy in a minute, Steve was ready.

The fight was brutal. It was fast. A bruise grazed Steve's cheek as he dodged to land his own in his opponents gut. He bit hit lip hard enough to taste blood after slamming a heel into the side of his attacker's knee and not quite felling him.

Brutal.

Fast.

Too fast to think.

And then the man pulled a gun on him.

Sniffing to himself as he climbed the last of the stairs to his apartment, Steve palpated his slowly swelling cheek distractedly. "And that was all," he said into the phone pressed to his ear.

There was a pause on the other end, of utter silence and consideration. Then Fury echoed him with a short, " _That's all?"_

A rhetorical question, Steve knew, but he couldn't quite bring himself to bite his tongue. The aftermath of a fight could leave him in one of two states: exhausted and heaving, or vibrating and panting heavily. This time was different, though. Steve didn't consider himself much of a talker – unless that talking came to asking questions of Bucky – but the need to say _something_ , to voice _something_ productively, was unshakeable.

"That's all. 'This is a warning,' he said, so I'd assume it was more an attempt to scare me off than an actual threat." Steve shook his head, wincing just slightly as he dropped his fingers to his lip and touched the split. "Just to let us know they know we're onto them."

 _"And to suggest that we're not as close or successful as we'd hoped,"_ Fury muttered, and Steve had to agree. HYDRA, for it could only be HYDRA that would openly attack and warn off an officer of SHIELD so deliberately, would have just killed him if he was _really_ a threat.

 _They would have just killed me…_ Steve shook his head again as he fumbled one-handed for his keys, jimmying the lock into his apartment. It clicked open nearly soundlessly. _I didn't feel like I was going to die but even so._

"I intend to call the rest of the team," Steve said, absently flicking on the living room light as he passed through into the kitchen. "As a warning in turn."

 _"I've got it covered,"_ Fury grumbled in his ear, and his tone bespoke his true thoughts on the matter more than anything else. Director Fury might not seem all that involved in the practical workings of SHIELD, and might only be appear on the occasions he called a meeting or saw fit to stick his head from behind his partition-office walls, but he held concern for his subordinates. To say he 'cared' might be a little too soft a word for Fury, but it almost felt like that. _"If you're not going to take my advice and come back to the basement, then get some sleep, Rogers. It's late. I'll contact the rest of them."_

Steve nodded in a silent, unseen reply as his phone clicked in an end to the conversation. Then, lowering it to his pocket, he bypassed the kitchen sink to spit free a globule of blood and made his way down the darkened hallway to his room.

He didn't feel shaken, or not really. Steve didn't _think_ he was shaken. His face hurt, his muscles still tensed with residual adrenaline, and he could feel the soft throbs of new blood rising from his lip, but he wasn't scared. What did that say of him, exactly? That he'd seen and experienced more than enough violence that it didn't phase him? Was that a good or a bad thing?

 _Should_ Steve feel scared?

He didn't know, but it didn't really matter. It wasn't like he was going to take Fury up on his suggestion and sleep at the basement again. He hadn't done that in weeks, and with the way the world was turning at the present, it was possible that he never would again. Not with Bucky around.

Even so, after tonight… it was a different kind of blow, because he'd thought SHIELD was making headway against HYDRA. Steve had thought that maybe, just maybe, they were getting just a little bit closer. But Fury had said it: _We're not as close or successful as we'd hoped._

 _Damn,_ he thought, deliberately uncurling his hands from their fists in an effort not to strike the wall beside him. _Damn it all…_

Steve hadn't forgotten that Bucky might be there, waiting for him. 'Might', because it was always a 'might'. He'd been appearing in Steve's room more consistently of late, a fact that Steve appreciated but never verbally acknowledged for fear of breaking the enchanting occurrence. He hadn't forgotten Bucky, or that he might be waiting for him that night.

He was just distracted.

As Steve eased open the door into his bedroom, seeping the glow from the hallway into the darkness within, he paused. A stop, an absent raising of his head as he pressed just as absently at his cheek. Then he was almost jerking backwards as Bucky suddenly appeared before him.

Only long practice holding his punches stopped Steve from striking him. Not that it would likely connect – he'd seen Bucky fight, if only twice – but it was with detached relief that he withheld. Then any thoughts of relief disappeared, because Bucky was close, _so close_ , but in a different way entirely to how he had been before. There was no touch of a kiss, an intimate caress of a hand, or the suggestion of passion.

Steve saw Bucky. He actually saw him, half-illuminated by the hallway light as he was. He didn't think he'd ever seen a gaze so intense.

Bucky had Steve's head cupped in his hands. His face was barely a handbreadth from Steve's. They were of a height, eye to eye, but Bucky wasn't meeting his own. He was staring at Steve's cheek, then flickering his gaze to his lip, then back again.

Bucky was a predator. That was the impression Steve had of him, even when in the throughs of heated gasps and heady warmth and grasping hands. That impression was only redoubled with the unfamiliar strain of proximity they stood in. Tension thrummed through him like the vibration of electricity through cables, the hold of his hands around Steve's face somehow both gentle and firm. And yet it wasn't threatening.

Steve hadn't felt truly threatened by the man with the gun, but this was different. He didn't even think he _should_ be. Not with Bucky. He'd thrown a knife at him, something Steve would never let himself forget, but he wasn't threatening.

_Bucky wasn't a threat._

"You're bleeding," Bucky said. His voice was so detached, such a low murmur, that not even his lips moved as he spoke.

"Yes," Steve said, because even if it hadn't sounded like it, Bucky spoke as a query. He always spoke in question or answer with Steve; that was just how it was. For once Steve didn't care; he was more than captured by Bucky's stare, his – his… could it be concern? Steve wasn't sure, but it almost felt like it.

"Who attacked you?"

 _He's not stupid_ , Steve thought, though he'd never considered Bucky otherwise. It was a testament to Bucky's smarts, however, or to his immersion in their world, that he made the connection so quickly.

"I don't know," he said.

"But it was…?"

An open question that said 'HYDRA' even without Bucky's direct accusation. Steve nodded his head in Bucky's unyielding hands. "I assume so, yes."

There was no overt change in Bucky's expression as he continued to stare at Steve's cheek. At his lip. And yet Steve felt it nonetheless – the slight shift in him, the sharpening of his tension, the nearly unfelt tightening of his grasp. Steve didn't dare pull away from his hold; he didn't think he ever wanted to.

Then Bucky blinked. As it always was with him, as Steve had come to realise for this older, more sombre Bucky who never smiled properly, that blink was a switch flicking from intimidating and potentially murderous into something slightly more human. Bucky's head shook just slightly. "Since when did you start picking fights like an asshole?"

Steve felt his lips pull smile that twinged painfully at the split. "Is that one of your questions?" he asked, and was rewarded by the twitch of Bucky's eyebrow and nothing more. "Since always."

"Bullshit."

"It's true. You know I've never been one to back down from a fight. I just never had the muscle to back up my mouth when I was a kid."

Bucky's gaze flickered briefly down to Steve's chest, to his arm, as he lowered his hands from Steve's face. Stupidly, yet almost expectedly by now, Steve felt the urge to straighten himself just a little. He'd never held much interest in posturing, had never considered himself 'attractive' past the bare functionality of muscularity, but it was different before Bucky. He liked it when Bucky looked at him in such a way.

Yet Bucky's voice was low and somehow detached when he spoke. "There was nothing really wrong with you," he murmured. He shook his head again. "I thought you were the smart one of the two of us."

"Not really," Steve replied. "Not ever."

Bucky flickered his gaze to meet Steve's once more. Another shake of his head, and he was reaching a hand up to cup the back of Steve's neck once more. "Idiot," he said, and Steve didn't get a chance to retort as Bucky tugged him forwards and dragged their lips together.

It hurt. Just a little, the kiss hurt for the bruising and the split. The deterioration into almost frantic passion of the likes Steve was a little – detachedly, uncaringly – astounded for was just as much. But he didn't care. Steve was fairly sure that he could be losing a limb and still find it within himself to embrace Bucky.

If only he'd known how good it felt. If only he'd known fourteen years ago that it would feel like _this._ Maybe, just maybe, Bucky wouldn't have left him.

* * *

_"Twenty-two," Steve said._

_Bucky wasn't looking his way, but Steve knew he was listening. "That's pretty young."_

_"Pretty young?" Steve shook his head on the pillow, shifting slightly to turn more fully to where Bucky lay mostly naked alongside him. He looked comfortable – or about as comfortable as Bucky ever looked, which was to say it was most likely a façade. "_ You _think twenty-two is pretty young?"_

_"I'm surprised Anna let you leave. Thought she'd be more reluctant."_

_"She was," Steve agreed, still shaking his head incredulously. "But she understood."_

_"Strange. She was always so overprotective of you when you were a kid."_

_I'd half expect her to never let you leave."_

_"In some ways she hasn't. She visits work sometimes, you know."_

_Bucky was staring up at the ceiling but Steve still caught a flicker of a shadow of amusement as it touched his lips. "Is that so?"_

_It felt different talking to Bucky of Steve's aunt and uncle. Different to how it felt with Sam, who'd met them countless times and still regularly visited on his scant days off. 'For the dinner' he said, though Steve knew he was an eternal fan of Anna's company if not so much her food. Nat appreciated Abraham's quiet intellect and even Tony had admitted he quite liked Steve's relatives, especially given that, "They're not as righteously objectionable as I'd have expected for being related to you."_

_But with Bucky it was different. Their exchange dredged up a whole aspect of their shared history that Steve had hardly considered for years._

_"Anna in particular said I was more than welcome to stay if I wanted to, but I was full-time at the station by that point and they'd moved was a fair distance away. It was easier to simply move out. Not that I had an issue with staying, but…"_

_Bucky eyed Steve sidelong in a way that was so reminiscent of Nat that Steve had to smile. One of Bucky's eyebrows twitched and even that was a little bit the same. "I guess kids don't usually leave home that early."_

_"Says the person who left home at sixteen," Steve said quietly, and even as Bucky's gaze hardened slightly, he refused to regret saying the words as soon as he'd voiced them._

_The truth of the matter was that Bucky didn't tell him things. He didn't truly answer his questions properly, and he didn't seem ashamed that he danced around those questions, either. Except that, for all of his elusive acts, he never disappeared for long. The longest Steve had gone without seeing him in months was four days._

_Steve didn't like to remember those days. He didn't think he could go through the wait again._

_But Bucky wasn't disappearing. He hadn't said he wouldn't, but somehow Steve felt the truth of it. Even more so after the incident two weeks before; Steve wouldn't have ever expected Bucky to allow himself to show concern, but even in a skewed manner that was certainly what it was. Steve didn't miss the way Bucky seemed to give him a once over every time he stepped into the bedroom anymore either. He also didn't miss that he visited more consistently. Steve wasn't objecting to that fact in the slightest._

_Steve held Bucky's gaze for a long moment and neither of them blinked. For once, it was Bucky who looked away, gaze drawn towards the ceiling once more. There was no night lamp to illuminate them by, but as close as they were to one another, Steve could see him well enough. Just enough to make out the line of his nose, the slight frowning of his eyebrows, the set of his mouth that was forbidding enough that Steve knew he wouldn't speak without further prompting._

_Steve knew he was manipulating the situation, but while he'd always striven to be a good person, some things he knew he made hypocritical exceptions for. He was growing to understand that he was perhaps more of a hypocrite than he'd given himself credit for over the years. "Can you tell me?" he asked._

_"Is that one of your questions?"_

_"Yes. If you answer it properly."_

_"We didn't stipulate extensiveness for answers."_

_"I know. Just how many do you have on me now, anyway?"_

_"Eighty-nine."_

_Steve smiled, though it died just as quickly as it arose. "Can you tell me?" he repeated._

_Bucky didn't quite sigh. His shoulders didn't quite sag and his expression – or what Steve could see of it – didn't quite crumple. But that was the impression Steve got as he turned his head just slightly to look at him. "There's not that much to tell."_

_"I'd like to hear it anyway."_

_"Why?"_

_"Because I want to know you."_

_Bucky shook his head slightly. "When did you become such a sap, Stevie?"_

_Steve would always love that name in a way he wouldn't – couldn't – admit. No one said it quite like Bucky did, either. No one else knew to use it at all. "Only for some exceptions."_

_"How sappy," Bucky said, and breathed his not-quite-sigh once more. Then he blinked, and if nothing else, the break in his staring was telling as always. "Dad was a drunkard. Mom was spineless, even if she pretended not to be. Then she suddenly grew a spine and decided she'd had enough." He shifted in something that felt like a shrug. "She always liked Becky better than me, anyway. It wasn't really surprising that it was her she took with her."_

_Steve pressed his lips together firmly. It was that or say everything he longed to, everything that threatened to spill forth. That it shouldn't have been such a way. That Bucky's father must have been a horrible person and his mother just as much, even if Steve had never seen Winifred Barnes in such a light. That it was cruel to take his sister away, and to demand why his mother couldn't have taken them both._

_Steve wanted to say that it wasn't fair, and but that especially he couldn't voice. He'd come to understand that Bucky didn't seem to believe in fairness all that much. Steve was starting to think he understood why._

_"That's shit, Bucky," he said lowly, in barely more than a whisper. He'd half-known most of it anyway, but it was different hearing the admission voiced aloud. "That's really shit."_

_"Hey, don't fucking swear," Bucky said, and surprisingly his voice actually seemed almost lightened. Almost amused. "What happened to the good little catholic boy?"_

_"I have no idea," Steve said, shifting slightly in the bed. He wondered if Bucky had noticed him edging closer to him as the hours passed. He wondered if Bucky cared. "I can't say I'm a dedicated church-goer these days."_

_"You heathen."_

_"Says you."_

_"Mom was Jewish if that counts for anything."_

_It didn't. Not to Steve. He didn't care about what denomination Bucky's parents were; he didn;t care about either of them except to resent them for their part in driving Bucky away._

_"Have you ever thought of finding her again?" Steve asked quietly. "Rebecca?"_

_Bucky hadn't needed the clarification before he'd begun to shake his head. Just a slight shake, but firm nonetheless. "No. She doesn't need this shit."_

_Steve bit back on the urge to ask what – what shit? What was he involved in and why. What had landed him in such circumstances, and how could Steve drag him out of it? He saw little enough evidence of what Bucky actually_ did, _but what he had seen was telling._

 _Steve didn't like it. He didn't like it at all, and increasingly less because what Bucky and HYDRA and Bucky_ in _HYDRA did was wrong. There were more important concerns, Steve had found, because Bucky was dangerous._

_Before Steve got the chance to voice another question, however, Bucky was tipping his head towards him once more. The darkness of his eyes through the gloom still had the power to capture Steve's whole attention. "I need to even the playing field."_

_"What?"_

_"A question." Then Bucky rolled onto his side in a mirror of how Steve lay. It was barely an inch closer but Steve felt the shortened distance anyway and felt warmed for it. "Did you ever grow the balls to ask Peggy Carter out?"_

_Steve laughed. He couldn't help himself, and it wasn't the first time he'd done so with Bucky either. Bucky himself might not laugh, barely even allowed the hint of a smile to touch his lips anymore, but he still had enough Bucky in him that Steve revelled in his company. More than that, slowly and almost tentatively of late he'd begun to ask Steve questions. Actual questions, and not at all pertaining to SHIELD or HYDRA. Steve was glad for that._

_He always answered. Sincerely and often expansively for the questions that weren't work-related. Bucky might still dodge around Steve's own fired questions, but Steve wanted him to know him. He was, after all, his Bucky. He always would be._

_"I did," he said. "Finally."_

_"Fucking finally."_

_"I told her I loved her too." Past tense, and Steve didn't feel guilty for admitting it. Peggy was wholly in his past._

_"You dog," Bucky said, prodding him in the shoulder with a finger. The metallic hardness of the digit was cold through Steve's shirt but he didn't mind. He'd gotten almost used to it, even if his curiosity of its nature and the very capacity of how it worked hadn't died. Tony would have loved to get his hands on it, being non-practicing engineer and genius inventor that he deemed himself._

_Steve didn't mind the touch. He didn't mind it even less that it lingered slightly._

_"It didn't last long," he said. "A couple of years. She was out of my league."_

_Bucky snorted but didn't comment to correct him His finger did poke Steve's shoulder again and it was a little more pointedly this time. "Anyone else?"_

_"Other than Peggy and Sharon, there was –"_

_"Wait, Sharon? As in Sharon Carter?"_

_"Please don't."_

_"As in, Peggy's niece, Sharon Carter?"_

_"She's only two years younger than Peggy, you know."_

_"Unbelievable."_

_"It's not as bad as it sounds. Really. And it didn't last long either."_

_"Un-fucking-believable…"_

* * *

Steve started walking.

It hadn't been a deliberate decision to do so that found him on the streets late at night. Foolishly so, he knew, for Steve's experience in the force had taught him of just the percentage of crimes that were conducted after nightfall.

But he walked anyway. When he couldn't sleep. Or, more correctly, when Bucky didn't come home.

It wasn't often that he was alone for any significant stretch these days. He was at work, and there were his SHIELD colleagues. He was in the gym, and if not Sam or Nat or another co-worker, the presence of like-minded gym attendees was silent company enough. And when he returned to his apartment, at least every second night, there was Bucky. Silent, waiting, as always simply a dark shadow in the slightly less dark gloom of Steve's bedroom.

Steve had come to expect Bucky to be there. To start thinking of his apartment as the working day drew to a close and the prospect of being with him, of feeling him and sometimes, by the now-familiar means of question and answer, talking. It made the nights that Bucky wasn't there seem even emptier. Even longer. Darker.

So Steve had started to walk. He didn't truly know what he was looking for, or whether he was looking at all. He wandered down streets that were as often starkly empty as they were populated by night-goers, striding beneath the radiance of blindingly yellow street lamps as frequently as he lost himself into the deep shadows between them. It wasn't cold, despite the tail end of summer drifting into autumn. There was no reason that Steve shouldn't be walking – if one overlooked the potential for becoming embroiled in crime, or that he should be sleeping when he could snatch an hour, or that he would, in fact, have to leave for work again in four hours, six hours, nearly five.

There was no _reason_ that Steve walked. Which was why, when he did find something, it came as almost a surprise.

The neighbourhood wasn't an upstanding one. It wasn't one of the NYPD-considered 'top ten safest regions in NYC to walk at night'. Not that such deemed it wholly dangerous either, or that the majority of the public considered it so. It was simply… a neighbourhood. The same as any other. The wide streets were barren in the early hours of the morning, a streetlamp buzzing slightly as it stuttered amidst its constantly glowing comrades. A wall of dingy buildings that could have been offices as likely as they could have been rather disappointing residences followed Steve with shuttered eyes.

Steve was walking because he couldn't sleep. Because Bucky hadn't come. Because his apartment was dark and felt unbearably quiet when it was just himself within its walls. He was walking in a neighbourhood that wasn't good and wasn't bad, and he was alone. Too early for the early birds and yet too late for the club-hoppers on a weeknight.

Alone.

Quiet.

Which was why, when the sound of a screeching car echoed in the middle distance, it sounded doubly loud. Triply so. It made the wail of an engine echo resoundingly. It made the distinctive snap of a gunshot even starker.

Steve was running before he realised. He had his holster strapped to the small of his back, because weeks of operations and the incident with the HYDRA threat had been nothing if not cautioning. Steve was running, and he was all too aware of his Glock, of what a gunshot meant, and that in all likelihood he wouldn't be able to do anything anyway.

But he would try. He would damn-well try, because it didn't matter what it was; protecting people, standing up for what was right, wasn't just his job. It was everything he strove for.

The roads were empty. That was good.

The streetlights grew less frequent. That wasn't so good.

Steve sprinted after the echo of a sickly-sounding engine, his steps pounding against the solid concrete beneath him, telling of his approach if nothing else. Steve didn't really care about that. He'd found that, oftentimes with crimes, the simple presence of an audience was enough to still a criminal in their tracks.

He saw the car. It had fishtailed into the curb, nose pointed towards the narrow opening of an alleyway and the streaks of its wayward skids marking the bitumen in a brutal story of its passage. It was a sleek model. Expensive. A hybrid, Steve noted detachedly, and had little time for more. There was no time to notice anything else, for even as he approached he heard the shout.

 _"_ Please! Please, _don't!_ I'm _begging_ you! _"_

Steve could barely understand the words, but he didn't think he needed to. The desperation, the plea, was profound enough that the words themselves were hardly needed. There was terror in the plea, but also demand. Fear and also affront. Horror and something more. Disbelief. The man hadn't expected to die that night.

Few man did.

Steve skidded to a stop at the corner of the alley and, with the controlled breathing that he'd practiced for years, muffled any hint of his jumping breath. He peered into the darkness beyond.

It was nearly indiscernible. Nearly impossible to make out even the vaguest of shapes. Or it was for the second that it took Steve's eyes to adjust. Then he saw the figure on the ground, scrambling backwards on his elbows and whimpering in bursts of those same demanding pleas. Steve couldn't see his face, could see little enough but a business suit wrenched into disorder, the shiny reflection of polished shoes that just managed to catch the glimmer of the streetlights.

Steve saw him for a heartbeat. A heartbeat was all that could be spared, because despite his tangible desperation, the noise the scrambling man emitted and his spasms that were all he was managing of his retreat, it was the other man who held his attention. The other man, in dark combat gear that blurred his form into the darkness of the alleyway, the pistol pointed casually downward in his hand. The way he walked, the negligibly graceful tread of heavy boots, as though he held no hesitancy and barely a glimmer of consideration for the creature quailing before.

It didn't matter that it was dark. It didn't matter that he was a shadow blurred or that his back was turned. Steve would recognise Bucky anywhere. Even more so now after feeling more than seeing him for _months_ now.

Steve stared. He should have strode around the mouth of the alleyway, hastening to Bucky's side to slam a hand to the pistol that breathed disaster and demise for the scrambling man. He should have put himself in the line of fire, because even if Bucky _had_ thrown a knife at him months before, even if he might again, that was the right thing to do. He should, perhaps, have even leaped to the man's defence, should have launched an attack, thrown a fist, raised his Glock and shouted at Bucky to drop his weapon.

But he couldn't. Steve couldn't move, could only stare. His body felt detached, frozen in a way that he hadn't been for years. That he might have never even been. The circumstances were so different, so vastly, horribly different, to everything that Steve had confronted before that his instincts failed him.

He couldn't hit Bucky. He couldn't train his gun upon him even to merely threaten. To do so would be so _Wrong_.

So he watched. Steve watched as the man's pleas deteriorated from hysterical cries into babble. As he stopped scrambling, because it wasn't getting him anywhere anyway. As he stared up at Bucky's approach and loosed a feeble shriek when Bucky raised his pistol.

Steve only stared as the gunshot sounded and Bucky put a bullet through the man's head. He stared and he still couldn't move.

For a long moment, neither did Bucky. Feet planted in a grounded stance, arm raised and pistol still pointed at the dead man that lay sprawled at his feet. Dead. Utterly dead. And Bucky had done that. Then, with his free hand, in a slow, almost dream-like motion, he reached into his pocket.

A phone.

A pause to tap a button. Then he raised it to his ear.

Steve didn't understand Russian. He only knew that Russian were the words Bucky spoke because of Nat. Nat rarely spoke Russian herself except when the heat of the moment got away from her; most of it, Steve assumed, were aggressive proclamations or cusses, and while Bucky's short words didn't sound quite so aggressive for the utter blankness of his tone, they bore the same clipped edges and lilting enunciating

A pause. Then more words. Another pause, and then nothing.

Bucky lowered his phone. He lowered his pistol. He stared for a moment longer at the dead man, and then he turned.

Steve was moving once more before he realised it. He hadn't even known he was going to throw himself into motion, to duck towards the abandoned hybrid that still idled on the curb and sink into the protective obscurity it provided. But he did, and just in time, for as Steve dropped to the ground behind the wheel, he heard Bucky's footsteps. Heavy steps, fast steps, and steps that retreated in the opposite direction to that Steve had ducked behind the car.

He could hear those steps as they faded into nothingness, but it was alongside a heavy thumping. He could feel the press of the car behind him, but it was secondary to the hot, rapid thudding of his heartbeat across the surface of his skin. He could feel the anger, the horror, the regret for the unknown man who lay dead and abandoned in the alleyway, but it was almost, _almost_ second to the greater anger and horror and regret and _want to know_ that flooded through Steve as he thought of _Bucky._

Always questions. It was always questions when it came to Bucky. Those questions leaped into his mind in rapid succession as, to the sound of a motorbike gunning to life, Steve raised himself slightly from his haunches and watched Bucky's distant figure disappear around the end of the block.

Steve waited alongside the dead man. He wanted to chase after Bucky, but he waited instead. He should have called in the incident, but his fingers wouldn't move to his own phone. He waited for what felt like forever but logic told him was barely a handful of minutes, and then he had to move. Not because he felt obliged but because he _had_ to. Because a black car, headlights dimmed, slid along the street and grazed to a halt alongside the alleyway.

In the darkness of the hastily retreated to observation point two buildings away, Steve watched as two figures sprung from the car, one hauling what looked like a barrel or a bucket of some kind. He watched as they disappeared into the alleyway, heard a sound like flung water splattering across the ground, and then as they reappeared with the body of the faceless dead man winging between them, the bucket-barrel hooked over the shoulder of one of the carriers.

It was over in barely a handful of seconds. All of it, in cool proficiency, with practiced speed, as if just such events had been undertaken countless times before. The car was pulling away in the direction it had come, headlights still dimmed, before Steve had even the thought to rise to his feet and hold them up.

He returned to the alleyway. He saw – and smelled – the splash of something distinctly chemical dampening the ground where the body had been. That was all. That was all that was left of the man who had scrambled on hands and knees in his desperate attempt at clinging to life. Not a drop of blood but instead a pool of clear, spreading liquid and an abandoned car.

Just how many other abandoned cars were the only witnesses to just such events that Steve had happened across? He didn't know. He wasn't sure what that meant for him but he _didn't know_.

He didn't see Bucky for another two days.

Whether it was a good thing that he didn't or not, Steve wasn't sure. On the one hand, that Bucky had disappeared for longer than he had in weeks was concerning. More concerning than Steve let himself feel, because where was he? Why had he all but disappeared? Steve couldn't even contact him if he wanted to, so what if something had happened or – worse – what if he'd decided not to come back at all?

Again?

And yet at the same time, Steve was grateful. Grateful, because he was furious. The rage that welled within him wasn't sharp and sparking, nor a flare of vivid anger that barked in shouts or hissed in seething fury. Steve felt it deep in his gut, a sickening hollow stuffed with… something. He felt it in the throbbing of his temples when he thought about the man on the dark road, the man he should have called in to the station but then couldn't because he'd disappeared without a trace.

The man that Bucky had killed. In cold blood, Bucky had put a bullet into the man as he scrambled away and begged for his life. He hadn't hesitated, had barely seemed to consider what he was doing. And then he'd just left.

What kind of Bucky was it that could do such a thing? How had he _become_ that kind of Bucky, and _be_ that Bucky when he was so entirely Other when they were together? Steve had accepted – had grown to accept – that Bucky was different to how he'd been in the past, and he could even appreciate that he cared for him nonetheless, but this? Steve's perception of black and white, of Good and Bad, had grown skewed in recent months, but this was something else. This was impossible. This… was Wrong.

Steve was angry at so many things, but Bucky primarily. That Bucky could do such a thing and that he still worked for the organisation that conducted such heinous acts and got away with them. He was almost as angry with Bucky as he was with himself.

Steve should have done something. He should have stopped Bucky. He should have gone to the man after he'd been killed, should have stopped him from being taken, should have called the crime in when he had the chance. Steve might be angry at Bucky but it was nothing compared to the anger – the _disgust_ – he felt for himself. Just what had he let himself become?

It was that anger, that low, bubbling anger that didn't spit or fight or argue but still caught the frowning attention of those in the SHIELD basement that sat with Steve for those two days of Bucky's continued absence. It was that anger that sat within him when he returned to his apartment that night, for he would _always_ return, and that anger that found him lost in the depths of his thoughts as he dropped his bag, pulled a bottle of water from the fridge, and absently kicked his shoes off.

That anger still nestled within him when his feet took him to his bedroom.

Steve had a sixth sense when it came to Bucky. It was different to knowing that 'someone' was there; he'd deduced that much over the past weeks, months – years, even, though he might not have known it in his childhood. As soon as Steve stepped through the doorway into his bedroom, away from the light of the hallway starkly juxtaposing the darkness within, he knew Bucky was there. He knew it on a level deeper than seeing, or feeling. He _understood_ it.

Anger welled and Steve found he couldn't speak through it.

Bucky must have sensed the silence. That this time the silence wouldn't be broken by Steve. He spoke for perhaps the first time into that silence, his words low and so quiet as to barely make it across the room. "Working late, Steve? How predictable."

Steve felt his jaw clench. His hands were already balled to fists at his sides, and he hastened to tuck them into the fold of his arms as then tightening and with the urge to punch something. Yes, he was still angry, and no amount of beating that anger out at the gym had lessened it. He found himself replying coldly with words he hadn't meant to say. "Which Bucky am I talking to?"

Silence ensued once more. A thick, static silence in which, even through the rising rage that tightened his jaw as it did his fists, Steve could feel Bucky think. He could feel the consideration, the suspicion, and then something like understanding voiced with the barest of sighs. He couldn't see Bucky, could barely hear him across the room, but he knew he understood. Bucky had never been dumb. He would have worked out somehow; that much Steve knew.

"What did you see?" Bucky said, even more quietly than before. Steve felt the words touch him almost more than he heard them.

"Enough," he said shortly.

"Ah." A rustle of movement, then, "I'll go. Wouldn't want to impress on your delicate sensitivities."

"I don't want that," Steve said. The words came out just slightly skewed through the tightness of his jaw. "I don't want you to leave. Dammit, Bucky, I just want some answers."

"Questions are all you ever ask, Steve."

"But you don't give me _answers_."

"You wouldn't like them if I –"

"I want to _know_ ," Steve said, and he heard the harshness of his own voice but didn't care. He heard the demand, the accusation, but he didn't care about that, either. "I want to know but you never _tell_ me. Why did you join HYDRA? Why would you work for them when they do such things? Fuck, Buck, even if you didn't have a moral bone in your body, which I _know_ you do, you'd be able to see that what HYDRA does is wrong. They're _wrong_ , Bucky, so how the _fuck_ can you still be a part of that? How – _how_ could you kill a man in cold blood and leave him there on the side of the fucking road? _How could you do that?_ "

The words weren't quite a shout, and Steve didn't know how they weren't. They should have been. For his anger, his pain, they should have been a shout. And yet they weren't; the anger was thick and pervasive and impossible to overlook, but Steve didn't shout. He'd never been one much for shouting.

A long pause met his demand in which Steve could feel Bucky's tension. A long, long pause, and then he said quietly, "Is that a question too?"

Steve fought to suppress a growl. _For once, could you just not..._ "That's always been my question. All of it." And he stepped inside the room.

He'd been blocking the hallway light. Steve had been blocking the only channel of light into the room that could illuminate the darkness, and it had been muffling, and deceptive. A blessing, even. It flooded through at that moment, yellow beams cascading along the path towards the window, and Steve saw Bucky. He saw him, a dark shadow in the light, and –

Anger shouldn't die so easily. It shouldn't, but it did.

Bucky stood across the room where Steve always found him. Far across the room and beside the partially open window that even then let in a hint of cool, autumnal breeze. Except that he wasn't standing, nor was he perched on the windowsill as he often sat himself. Far from either pose, Bucky was folded onto the floor, back to the wall and one leg extended before him. The other was pulled to his chest in a that would have been casual and relaxed for the arm resting atop his knee but somehow wasn't. It wasn't at all. If anything, Bucky looked exhausted.

That exhaustion lay in the darkness beneath his eyes. His eyes themselves stared blankly not at Steve but at his own extended foot. The mess of his hair that was never _not_ messy somehow seemed lanker than usual and the slight downward tilt of his head. He looked like he'd been sitting there for hours, and that it was only sheer control that stopped him from sagging completely into the floor beneath him.

Maybe it was because Steve rarely saw him properly when they first came together each night. Maybe Bucky _had_ looked so tired before and Steve just hadn't noticed. Except that Bucky always possessed a certain tension, a readiness, a predator within him that was just a hiss of breath away from surfacing. Not now, though. Not now.

Anger shouldn't die so quickly, and certainly not in the face of a murderer. Yet for Steve, it did.

"Nicolas Campbell," Bucky said. Low. Flat. Emotionless, even. "Thirty-six. A businessman. Wife, two children, both girls. He lived in the Bronx – an upstanding street – an was well-liked by his neighbours." He paused for a moment before continuing. "I killed him five days ago when I was ordered to."

Steve felt himself chill. Immobilised, he could only stare as he stood half inside the room. He could only stare, could only listen, as Bucky continued.

"Maura Hastlehoff. Twenty-seven. She talked to the wrong people. Single, lived alone – it was almost too easy to get into her house. Four days ago."

The flatness of Bucky's tone was the worst of it. It was detached, as emotionless as his expression, and yet it was that very emotionlessness that told Steve it was anything but.

"Ray Evan. Forty-three years old. He had a heart condition and a tendency to mix drugs that he shouldn't. Two days ago, it was easy enough to have him take just the wrong combination."

Steve closed his eyes just briefly. "Bucky," he said, but the word didn't come out.

"Yesterday," Bucky said. "Patricia and Don Millard. Married seventeen years, they lived in an uptown apartment. Real nice. They made a threat and threats aren't taken lightly. They killed one another, did you hear?"

Steve swallowed and blinked as Bucky dropped his chin just slightly. Not abashedly, not ashamedly, but the gesture was pronounced nonetheless. "Bucky," he said, and this time it sounded.

But Bucky didn't seem to hear him. "You asked, Steve. You asked, so I'm telling you. HYDRA needed to cull. They do that sometimes, and I'm the one who does it. I always am. It's what I do." His eyes were the only thing that rose, peering across the distance between them to where Steve stood frozen. "So do you lock me up now or do we just jump the gun and put a bullet through my head straight away?"

Steve flinched. He couldn't help himself; any anger he'd held had utterly vanished as Bucky spoke. Despite his words – that he spoke so flatly of _killing_ people, which was so wrong that every muscle in Steve's body screamed in protest – he wasn't angry. He wasn't even horrified. It was the way Bucky spoke, the emotionless yet exhausted tone. Bucky had never been a cruel person, and Steve didn't think he was now. He didn't think he was even if he'd killed people. Killed _so many people._

"I'm not going to kill you, Bucky," Steve said, the words sour and repulsive on his tongue. "And I'm not going to lock you up."

Bucky stared at him, eyes so dark they were little more than blank smudges in his face. "Idiot," he said.

"Why?" Steve asked before clarifying. "Why are you with them? Why do you -?"

"I owe them," Bucky said. No confusion; they both knew who Steve referred to. HYDRA was a constant presence between them, the elephant in the room. "Have done for years."

"Why?"

"A debt."

"But _why_?" Steve persisted. No debt could ask for that much. It wasn't possible. Bucky shouldn't – he _shouldn't_ – "What kind of debt would -?"

"I went bad, Steve," Bucky said, voice as flat and emotionless as before. Even more so if possible, and to Steve's ears that was entirely telling. "Real bad. Shit happened, I got dragged down, and I wouldn't have come out the other side if it wasn't for them." The hand resting in his lap rose to touch briefly at the metal one resting atop his knee. "They saved my life so now it's theirs."

Steve felt his hands curl into fists once more. It was anger that rose, but of a different kind. A distant anger. An old anger at what he'd never really understood before. That Bucky would think… that he would be caught in such a situation was…

He'd still killed someone, but Steve couldn't hate him. The number of people, the countless people, that he'd killed was Wrong, but Steve could never hate him. Never. "That's not fair, Bucky," he said quietly, and he heard the waver in his own voice. "A good deed doesn't necessitate repayment of equal value in return. That's not how it works."

"Fairness," Bucky echoed. He uttered a sound that didn't shift his expression, a sound that could have been a laugh but wasn't. "Nothing's fair, Steve."

 _And don't you know it,_ Steve thought. Bucky had told him his thoughts on 'fairness' more times than he could count. "Bucky –"

"That's just the way it is, Steve," Bucky said, overriding him. He raised his chin and finally, finally met Steve's across the room. Steve couldn't have looked away had he wanted to. He'd always been captured by Bucky. "It's the way it is."

 _But that's not fair_ , Steve longed to say again, because fairness and morality and what was right was such a huge part of him that he couldn't fathom it _not_ being integral. And yet for Bucky it wasn't. Nothing was fair. He killed, murdered in cold blood, and it was a job for him – and that wasn't right. He'd been dealt a shit hand of life as a drunkard father, a abandoning mother, had nearly been pushed too far, and that wasn't right either.

None of it was right. None of it was fair. But just as Bucky said, fairness wasn't a part of the matter. It didn't even pretend to have a place.

The dead man – the dead men and women – still hung over Steve's head. They likely always would. Bucky's history with HYDRA, what little he'd learned and the vast sea of that which Steve knew he knew nothing about, hung suspended alongside it. But Steve couldn't see them at that moment. He couldn't see anything but Bucky and the blank mask of expressionless he'd drawn upon his face, a mask that he'd been forced into constructing in the years of there time apart. Steve saw it and his heart broke just a little.

_Nothing's fair…_

He crossed the room, was on his knees the next second, and it was only the weight of months of touching and closeness that allowed him to urge Bucky to shift his leg to the side so that Steve could draw closer to him. So that he could reach for him, could clutch a shoulder, could sink down until he was almost on top of him. Bucky didn't assist his manoeuvring for closeness, but he didn't pull away either. He just stared as Steve raised his other hand to the side of Bucky's head.

"Bucky," he sighed, and he could hear the pain in his voice. "Why did you ever have to leave?"

Bucky didn't quite rest his head against Steve's hand; such a gesture wouldn't be like him. But the sentiment was felt all the same with his slow blink, for the fact that he didn't draw away from Steve. "You didn't need this shit," he said quietly.

The words resounded in Steve's ears, an echo of those Bucky had said to him before. Not about Steve but for his sister. For the sister that he wouldn't search for because of 'this shit'. He felt his throat seize, fingers curling into Bucky's hair, and only managed to ask a hint of what he truly wanted to know. "Why did you come back?"

Bucky closed his eyes. There was so much told in that one gesture, that one flutter of eyelids. Bucky killed people. It was what he did. Every part of him had been shaped and honed for it, and Steve had felt the very effects of that shaping beneath his own hands. He'd appreciated without really understanding _why_ Bucky had become the glorious creature he was. Or maybe he'd understood and hadn't truly wanted to see it. He hadn't wanted to know.

But Bucky closed his eyes, gave himself over to temporary blindness, and his exhale was heavy enough that Steve felt it. "You're a damn-hard person to leave alone, Stevie."

Steve paused for a breath. "That's why?"

"That's why."

"But that's –"

"Always have been," Bucky said, and though his voice wasn't loud enough to override Steve's words, he was silenced anyway. "Ever since you were a little kid."

Steve felt the chuckle bubble from him without a whisper of true amusement. They seemed both afflicted by a lack of merriment that night. "Unlikely."

"Don't doubt me."

"I'm not. It just feels pretty hard to believe." Steve shook his head, leaning forwards until his brow nearly touched Bucky's. "Even as skinny little toothpick?"

"Even then," Bucky said, and then he opened his eyes. He stared at Steve, so close, and it was as though Steve was looking at him, was understanding just a part of small him, for the very first time. "I've always been a pretty bad person, Steve, but even then."

Steve wanted to object. Despite the deaths Bucky had admitted to, he wanted to object to his 'badness'. Because he wasn't. Not his Bucky. Except that Steve couldn't speak. He couldn't say or even think anything, because the greater thought that welled within him overwhelmed it.

_Oh. So that's what it was. It's been that long?_

He didn't ask the question. Steve didn't ask for the clarification; it would feel almost cheap to have it voiced when the answer was so evident in Bucky's eyes. Such a thing was better left unsaid, was sometimes _more_ when left unsaid.

So Steve didn't say anything either. Instead, he closed the remaining distance between them, cupped his other hand to Bucky's head, and drew him closer. Bucky let himself be drawn, and the kiss he returned to Steve's was simple yet heavy for the weight that rested behind it.

Steve had only ever loved one other person his whole life, but Peggy was different. Compared to Bucky, it was different entirely. In the midst of the sudden realisation of just _how much_ there was that Steve hadn't even known, how much was there and somehow wasn't made any less by the weight of the wrongness of HYDRA, Steve was afforded that understanding at least. He dragged Bucky to him, lost himself in the heat of skin revealed beneath unnecessary clothes, in squeezing hands and flushing cheeks and lips, lips everywhere and smattering in peppered presses of warm breath. Steve wouldn't have let Bucky go even had he held a knife to his throat.

Steve was far gone. He'd already known it, known that what he was doing was wrong – against his beliefs, against SHIELD – but he hadn't turned aside. He hadn't turned back. Now, lost in Bucky and the weight of years missed between them, he didn't think that turning back was even possible anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

"It was a gift."

Steve started. Not because hearing Bucky's voice was unexpected, because it wasn't. Not because he'd forgotten the Bucky lay beside him on his bed, because he definitely hadn't. He started slightly and turned his head towards him because Bucky had spoken at all. Because Steve hadn't asked a question and they'd made a rule: that Bucky answered what Steve asked. They'd clung to that rule for months.

But Bucky chose to speak. For the first time, Bucky spoke without Steve asking a question.

Through the darkness that they always maintained in Steve's room, he could see Bucky well enough. He could see the outline of him as well as the paleness of his face, the darkness of his hair and the shadows of his cheekbones. Steve's eyes were adjusted enough that he could even make out the curl of eyelashes around his dark eyes as they stared upwards towards his raised arm. His metal arm; with the faintest of clinks, he curled, uncurled and twisted his fingers.

Steve had explored that arm. With his fingers, his eyes, his mouth. He knew the coldness of it, the groves of its links and the seam where it knitted into Bucky's shoulder. He'd winced over the scarring that was so old as to have become little more than a white crosshatch on Bucky's skin. Steve had never asked questions about the arm, because Bucky hadn't given him any indication that he would answer them, but he still found it fascinating – as much because it was so clearly a part of Bucky as because of the mastery of its make.

"Is that so?" Steve finally said, though his words didn't really feel like a question. They always spoke in questions, the two of them, but not this time.

Bucky didn't glance his way when he replied. "I didn't lie, you know. When I said my old arm came off."

"I didn't think you did."

"It came off forcefully," Bucky said, as though Steve hadn't spoken at all. Maybe he hadn't even heard him. His voice was low in retrospect, faintly detached. "I was pretty deep in shit, Stevie, and it was just one step too far. Stupid, but it happened. It was entirely my fault."

For a moment, Steve didn't speak. He didn't want to break the spell, for it almost felt like an enchantment that it could induce Bucky to speak as he did. Slowly over the past weeks, ever since Bucky had disappeared for days and returned with blood on his hands that Steve had actually seen, things had changed. Not dramatically. Not starkly. But slowly, incrementally, and eventually, when Steve asked – not about HYDRA but about Bucky – Bucky started to answer.

He told Steve of how he'd left home, left school, left New York entirely, which went above and beyond what Steve had expected. When Steve asked, Bucky told him of what he'd done, speaking vaguely but sufficiently of the kind of unsavoury jobs he'd pulled to get by. He spoke just as vaguely of how he'd pissed off the wrong people, how he'd known he'd had his name marked, and how HYDRA had stepped in for him.

Always HYDRA. No names, it was always just 'HYDRA', or sometimes 'they'. Sometimes even 'him', though Steve didn't know who 'him' was. Bucky had revealed that much, and before the drilling of Steve's questioning, he knew that Bucky would likely reveal more if he asked.

Steve didn't ask about HYDRA. Not at all. He was starkly aware of the allowance that Bucky was making for him in revealing anything at all and was unspeakably grateful for that. Steve had shared stories of himself when Bucky had used his questions against him, and Steve didn't mind sharing. He wanted Bucky to know him better, as well as he'd known him before. Just as Steve wanted to know Bucky, and just as he'd grown to realise he hadn't ever known that much about him at all.

But he would remedy that. This time around, it would be different.

"It didn't happen immediately," Bucky was continuing. "There's no point in investing in something that's not going to provide benefits back. So I made my way, and showed them I was worth it without even realising it. And they gave me this."

His metal hand curled into a gentle fist, the little clicks of metal on metal just audible. Steve watched it intently and couldn't help but marvel; not only was it an incredible piece of machinery but it really _was_ a part of Bucky. It was a part of him as much as his other arm. As Bucky thought, as he commanded, the hand and arm responded.

"It's incredible," Steve said, and he raised his own hand to reach absently to Bucky's wrist.

Bucky snorted. The sound was almost amused. "You would say that."

"And you wouldn't?"

"It's a weapon."

"It's a part of you, regardless of where it came from."

Steve felt as much as saw Bucky's gaze dart briefly towards him as he grazed his fingers over the back of Bucky's metal hand. His voice was even lower when he spoke. "Just like I said. A weapon."

Steve flicked a glance to Bucky the moment Bucky drew his eyes away. He felt his jaw tighten and edged towards him across the mattress just slightly. His hand dropped from Bucky's wrist to rest atop his shoulder. "Bucky," he said quietly. "You're not a bad person."

Bucky only hummed flatly in reply.

How Steve's mindset had changed. How so much of his thoughts had changed since he'd met Bucky again. A year ago everything had been so simple; Sam was right in that the ignorance of a black and white perception was a benefit. That it made things easier. All of that had changed now, though, because Steve had changed. He'd changed so much that he _knew_ there was no going back. No one could retrace that many steps.

The difference lay not in HYDRA, because Steve would always consider them Wrong. They would always be a mar upon the face of New York that needed to be hacked out before the wound could be stitched back up again and begin to heal anew. HYDRA would always be wrong for as long as they existed, and the more of Loki's leads, the more of the operations that were, while more than they'd ever managed before, inevitably barely the tip of the HYDRA iceberg, the more Steve's understanding of that fact was reinforced.

But Bucky wasn't wrong. He wasn't bad. He was so firmly planted in the region between the two extremes that Steve had hitherto considered were the only possibilities that he demanded Steve overturn his blindness. Because Bucky killed people; it was what he did, what he was still doing, and it was for the wrong side. For the wrong reasons. Bucky _murdered_ people, and in the vaguest of replies to Steve's vaguest of questions, he'd admitted that those people weren't bad. That some of them weren't even from HYDRA. That some, many, had simply made the wrong decision that had them wind up with a bullet through their heads.

More wrong decisions. More greyness. Even without Bucky, the midpoint of the extremes grew more and more pronounced in Steve's mind.

It was why Steve spoke as he did. Why he denied Bucky when he said he was bad. Because Steve didn't believe it. He couldn't believe Bucky was bad, because people didn't wear the expression he'd worn when he'd first admitted his murders to Steve. People who murdered with not the faintest touch of remorse didn't kiss like Bucky did, didn't feel warm like him, didn't keep returning again and again when they knew they shouldn't because they _wanted_ to.

Bucky wasn't Bad. He just did Bad Things. Steve took every opportunity to remind him of that fact.

"You're not, Bucky," he repeated. "I know you're not."

"You know next to jack-shit, Stevie," Bucky said, though there wasn't any heat or resentment to his words. He still wasn't looking at Steve.

"I do, actually. I know you."

"You don't."

"I knew you fourteen years ago. Nearly fifteen, now. You haven't changed that much."

"And that," Bucky said, fluttering his metallic fingers above him once more, "is where you're wrong."

Steve curled his own fingers into Bucky's shoulder. He pressed his lips together but couldn't help replying. "I'm not," he said quietly. "I'm not wrong, Buck. And even though you don't tell me all that much and I'm not going to ask, I know you don't like HYDRA. I know you know they're wrong. And I reckon you'd get yourself out of there if you could."

 _I'd do it for you if you'd let me_ , Steve wanted to say, but he held his tongue. Somehow, something within him told him that should he even try, Bucky would leave him again. That much Steve wouldn't be able to endure. He didn't think he could survive Bucky leaving him again. Not now.

Bucky was silent for a long moment. Silent and staring at his hand, and so still as to seem like he wasn't breathing at all. Bucky could do that, Steve found; it was the predator within him that could remain as immobile yet attentive as a shadowy statue when he wanted to. Nights of watching him seated on Steve's windowsill had proven that much.

But then Bucky turned. Slowly, so slowly, he turned his head towards Steve and though his eyes were dark, the shadows making them darker still, Steve could see something in them. There was something… there. "Of course you'd think that," Bucky murmured. "You have this stupid tendency to see the best of people, Steve."

"Only when it's already there to be seen," Steve replied.

For another moment, Bucky stared. Then, in a fluid motion that reminded Steve intimately of everything about Bucky – how he fought, how he kissed, how he simply _was_ – he rolled across the distance between them until he was atop of him. He legs straddled Steve's waist and he settled upon his hips in a way that was so natural that they could have been acting such a way for years.

And that was the whole of it. It _was_ natural. Steve would never feel more comfortable, more right, then when he was touching Bucky, feeling him, _knowing_ him. He hadn't realised that fact until he'd had it within his grasp. Even at that moment, feeling the heavy weight of Bucky on top of him, it wasn't with fear for being pinned beneath someone who could very definitely destroy him. Instead, Steve revelled in the chance to curl his hands along Bucky's naked thighs, to press warm, hard skin beneath his fingertips and feel the tightness of muscle beneath. To stare up at him, all broad shoulders and pale skin and spans of beauty that Steve just hadn't appreciated when they were youths. How hadn't he seen it?

Bucky was staring back down at him, but there was a different weight to his gaze. A difference to the touch of his metal fingers as they grazed briefly beneath Steve's chin before falling to his shoulder. His lips parted for a long moment before he finally spoke. "You're not getting anywhere."

Steve blinked. It was hard to concentrate on anything besides the feel of Bucky on top of him, the heat of his body and the smoothness of skin that Steve couldn't help but touch and touch and _touch._ "What?"

"Your missions," Bucky said shortly. "Your team. You're not getting anywhere."

Steve's fingers stilled. He felt his whole body still, and it wasn't only because of the abrupt turnabout that Bucky's words had taken. It was because of the truth of those words that Steve – that the whole of SHIELD, for that matter – had realised but never voiced. It had been a niggling understanding for weeks, now. Months.

Their missions were a success, but they were all self-contained. Loki's leads were valid, but it was the barest scrapings upon the surface of intelligence. The HYDRA they'd captured were difficult to break, but when they did they were ignorant as often as not. Even those that did cough up further intel provided as little if not less than Bucky did himself.

It was frustrating. As it had been with SHIELD for so many years, it was frustrating. This time, however, it felt worse, because they'd had something else. They'd had a respite, their moments of success and progression and the tentative steps to getting somewhere. Only to find that they'd abandoned one maze for a longer, taller and deeper one, just as riddled with booby traps. They were a little closer to the centre, but not by much. Infuriatingly, it wasn't by much at all.

Swallowing, Steve nodded once. "I know."

"What are you going to do about it?"

Bucky's question didn't sound like an interrogation. True, it wasn't entirely innocent because Bucky was _Bucky,_ and regardless of what Steve might want, that made him HYDRA. But there was no digging to the question. No unveiled attempts at espionage. Bucky asked and it didn't feel like he asked for HYDRA. If nothing else, it was that feeling that confirmed it to Steve: Bucky murdered, was a murderer, even, but he wasn't bad. Steve couldn't think him bad.

He shook his head. "I don't know."

Bucky regarded him for a moment. His finger, his real finger, tapped slightly on Steve's chest. Then he clicked his tongue and sat back slightly. His gaze fell down to his metal arm. "It was a gift," he said, just as he had minutes before. Steve nodded. He felt like Bucky requested the reply, despite the fact that he wasn't even looking to him, and sure enough, a moment later Bucky continued. "You know who it was, who gave it to me."

Steve stared. He blinked, stared again, then frowned. "What?"

"You know who he is, Steve," Bucky said, and he still hadn't raised his gaze from his arm. His metal fingers had begun to tap on Steve's shoulder as well, the feeling entirely different to that of his other hand. "You know. You know the doctor. I don't need to tell you."

 _I won't tell you_ , went unvoiced, but Steve heard it anyway. He knew it even without Bucky saying as much. Just as Steve couldn't – wouldn't – betray SHIELD with speaking of them even to Bucky, Bucky wouldn't – couldn't – betray HYDRA. He might not like HYDRA, Steve was slowly growing to realise, but he owed them. He owed them his life. He _couldn't_ betray them.

But there was something else to the words. Something that Steve couldn't quite understand. He felt himself frown. "What do you mean?"

"You _know_ him, Steve," Bucky repeated. His taps became insistent pokes, gaze flickering to meet Steve's briefly. Just briefly, tellingly. Pointedly. "You've been after the doctor for some time now. I know you have."

Steve slowly shook his head. Bucky wouldn't give him this doctor's name, but he was implying. Heavily implying, to the point that he practically said it himself. Another shake of his head as Steve wracked his brains for anything – who? What was Bucky referring to? What did he mean? – and then it clicked.

He knew. He knew, if only distantly. Only vaguely. Only in the way a pursuer recognised the soles of their escapees fleeing feet. "You mean… Zola?"

Bucky didn't reply. He'd drawn his gaze back down to his arm, and that simple blankness – nothing could convince Steve more that he wasn't a cold-hearted assassin than that. Almost emotionless, but not quite. Almost careless, but _not quite_. Sobriety thinned Bucky's lips slightly, and when he spoke it was hushed, seemingly almost to himself.

"The doctor wasn't the one directly involved, but he directed. He's a mastermind. He's…" Bucky paused, and his thinned lips pursed instead. He hadn't confirmed Steve's suspicions but the very fact that he didn't deny them was confirmation enough. "He's not a real doctor. He's not a real – fuck, he's not even a real chemist or anything. But he does experiment. On everything."

Seemingly unconsciously, Bucky raised his real hand to his shoulder, to the seam between metal and skin that held his cybernetic arm in place. He was still regarding his metal hand, lips still slightly pursed but expression otherwise blank.

Steve felt his gut tighten and had to force himself ot let got of Bucky's legs to avoid bruising them in a way that Bucky likely wouldn't comment upon. He settled his hands upon Bucky's waist instead. "Experimenting?" he said, a struggle through teeth that longed to clench tightly.

"Experiments," Bucky nodded. "He's insane."

Three words. Three words, and Bucky seemed to encompass all that Zola was to him. Steve knew little enough of Zola but what they'd managed to scrounge together at SHIELD. He knew that he was of HYDRA, of course, and that he was a silent, invisible player of the HYDRA drug trafficking industry. Whispers of his name carried through the air from unidentifiable figures and apprehended members of HYDRA alike.

But he hadn't been found. Despite Steve's askance of Fury, who had already been going to ask Thor if he could in turn ask Loki, Loki hadn't provided them with anything on Zola. No base location, nor any incriminating intelligence, nor even the corners that the dealing went down upon. They knew Zola was involved in dealing, which was one of the main reasons the Asgard Squad still scrambled at his tail.

Few enough real head-honchos of HYDRA had been heard of, let alone named. Zola remained a faceless figure pinned to the wall and Nat's corkboard at the SHIELD basement. He had been for years.

Steve swallowed. He didn't know what Zola had to do with Bucky but… _experiments_? He wanted to punch something. Maybe even someone. "You know where he is?" he asked quietly, almost warily.

Bucky still stared at his fingers. Through the darkness, his eyes were smears of shadow in his face. Until he tipped his head and turned to stare instead down at Steve's face. "Don't suppose you get any time off?" he said just as quietly.

"Not really."

"Then make some time. You're gonna enjoy me showing you this, Stevie."

* * *

It was cool outside. Cool drifting towards cold, though Steve couldn't quite feel it through the thickness of his jacket. His breath plumed in a vaguely pale smoke.

Night had long since fallen. The streets weren't empty – they were never empty, never quiet, in New York City – but the narrow road Steve stood upon was still. The cars parked along either side – some illegally, Steve noted detachedly – slept with headlights blackened and engines smothered. The few lights that flickered in the buildings alongside the sidewalk did little to support the wan orange glow of the streetlamps overhead.

Steve was alone. In the darkness of night, he was alone, and waiting, and when he was alone and waiting it was usually for Bucky. Just like this time.

Bucky always played on his mind. Always, in some way or another, he was there. Thoughts of meeting him again, of holding onto him, because Steve wouldn't let him leave this time. Thoughts of what they now shared that was a mess of passion, and unspoken feelings, and fervour, and heat that Steve somehow still didn't know what to make of but wouldn't want any other way.

Bucky killed people. That fact was unshakeable and Steve couldn't rid himself of it. More than that, he was a _good_ killer. Great, even. Steve had seen him fight and it was enough to know that Steve himself wouldn't want to challenge him; not because it was Bucky and he _never_ wanted to fight Bucky, but because he wasn't sure he would win. Sam always said how Steve was a 'great fighter' and could 'win fights with the best of them', but Steve had been questioning his fighting skills for months. Several months, in fact. Ever since the night at Dogend Docks.

The fact of the matter was that Bucky was built for it. Not just physically, though he was. Not just because he seemed to possess the unnerving ability to blank himself from the situation and fight, just as Steve had seen. It was because he was _good_ at it. Made for it, even.

Built. Steve shuddered at the thought – the recollection of Zola, of experiments – even as the recurring urge to punch something arose. Experiments? On _people_? He'd thought Zola and thus HYDRA had been predominately focused on what every criminal organisation wanted: money and power. Apparently they went above that, however. They went above, and the evidence lay in Bucky.

 _He's not a killer_ , Steve thought. _He was just made to be one_.

For that was the truth. Steve believed – _knew_ – that Bucky wasn't bad. Maybe he was blind for thinking so, but he felt it to his very core. And yet Bucky _was_ good at killing, and it was all because of what HYDRA had made him.

They'd saved his life? He owed them? The urge to strike something was never stronger in Steve when he contemplated Bucky's flat, detached non-explanation. He didn't work for HYDRA. He was practically a slave, and his commitment to their cause was scarcely more than compulsion.

 _"I belong to them, Steve,"_ Bucky had said nights before. It might have been a profession of loyalty, but it hadn't sounded that way to Steve. _"So if you want to take HYDRA down then you've got to manage it yourself._ "

Steve knew that. He knew Bucky couldn't betray HYDRA for the same reasons that Steve couldn't do the same to SHIELD; there was complex loyalty there that ran deeper than simply 'the job'. That fact, Bucky's inability to do what he surely knew needed doing, was the very reason Steve stood in the darkness at eleven o'clock chill on a Thursday night.

For perhaps the hundredth time, Steve checked his watch. He hadn't had to leave the basement early that evening, but he had, and in doing so he'd drawn more than a few raised eyebrows.

"This that new girlfriend you've got going on the side?" Tony asked, not glancing up from whatever he was fiddling with as Steve packed away his papers. "No, wait, it's the ex-boyfriend, isn't it?"

"No," Steve said.

"You going to go and see Abraham and Anna?" Sam asked.

"No."

"Turning in early?" Wanda suggested, for some reason sounding almost hopeful. Then, with a pointed glance Vision's way, said, "Some of us should try that sometimes rather than return to our beds and pretend to sleep while cracking useless codes on their phones instead."

Vision missed her pointed remark.

Steve flashed her a smile and spared another for the oblivious Vision. He hoped it hid his growing nervousness for the coming evening. "Not that either."

"Not doing something dangerous I hope, Steve," Nat asked, and the tone of her voice – teasing, but only to the passing listener – drew Steve's momentary attention.

He met her gaze across the room to where she glanced briefly his way. His hands still for just a moment before he shook his head. "Don't worry, Nat. I'm not."

"That's ominous," Clint called from his perch.

"Give the man a break," Rhodie said. "He's allowed to leave without being hassled."

"Are we leaving?" Bruce called from his office. "Already?"

"Get your ass back to work, Banner," Tony said, raising his voice distractedly. Bruce subsided with an unintelligible mutter of reply that had Tony chuckling.

Of course, that night was the one night that everyone in SHIELD decided to stay past nine. So expectedly, that night was the night that they all saw him leave. Steve had never being a particularly guileful person; he could only hope that by avoiding replying he was concealing enough.

Leaving with the weight of numerous pairs of eyes upon his back, Steve didn't think he'd managed quite so successfully. At least none of them – namely the eternally sceptical Nat and the hawk-eyed Clint – followed him. Steve knew he was good enough, and recognised to be good enough, at catching tails that even they wouldn't try.

Which was how he found himself in the middle of an empty street and glancing at his watch that, by the light of the overhead streetlamp, read eleven-oh-four. Four minutes late wasn't _late_ , but it still made Steve jittery. He shuffled in place, then paced in a circle, glanced along one length of the road and then another.

Then he stilled as the sound of a motorbike purred into hearing. Steve turned instinctively as it built before, seconds later, without the glow of headlights to speak of its passage, a black beast scored around the corner. It glided to a rumbling stop alongside him.

Hands stuffed casually in his pockets, Steve stepped from the curb. "You know, it's illegal to drive without your lights on."

Bucky stared at him. Through the darkness, the ever-present darkness that always seemed to be Bucky's constant companion, his unwavering context, Steve saw him blink.

"A Harley?" Steve nodded his head in a gesture, eyeing the bike – and admittedly its rider – appreciatively. "What's that, a Breakout? It suits you."

Bucky still stared at him, though Steve could swear he saw his eyebrow twitch just slightly.

"I can't say I approve of the lack of helmet, though. That's illegal too."

"You going to book me, then?" Bucky asked.

The words might have been teasing – a tease for Steve's tease, as it were. Steve might have even been able to pretend they were if he hadn't noticed the tightness of Bucky's hands curled around the handlebars, the tension of his shoulders, or his unwavering stare. Bucky wasn't scared, and Steve wasn't sure he even could be scared like most people, but he certainly wasn't comfortable.

 _And why would he be_? Steve acknowledged silently. _With what we're going to do, how would he?_

Shaking his head and recognising his half-hearted attempts at banter as his own uneasiness, Steve shook his head. "No. I don't think I will."

"Good to hear," Bucky said. Then he tipped his head slightly to the pillion behind him. "Haul arse, Rogers. We don't have all night."

Steve was quick to oblige. It might be illegal to ride without lights, without a helmet, with – well, with an assassin at all, but Steve was past that. As it was with Bucky, as it had always been and perhaps was even Wrong to be so, it didn't matter. Bucky was the exception. He always would be.

Maybe that made Steve a little Wrong, a little Bad, too?

He disregarded the thought, though, because he had to. Because the world wasn't divided into black and white, and the kind of grey that Bucky presented was necessary. Where they were going, what they were doing – it was necessary. Steve slung a leg over the back of Bucky's Breakout, locking his arms around him and fingers into Bucky's thick leather jacket. His feet had barely left the ground before Bucky was kicking of with a gun of the engine, and they were lurching from the street at a leap that drew in bare seconds into a gallop.

Steve didn't know where they were going. Not exactly. He hadn't asked because Bucky hadn't given him the information, and he wouldn't push it. Loki's intel was one thing, but this? This went beyond that. This went _far_ beyond that, and Steve couldn't run the risk of missing the opportunity for asking questions. He trusted Bucky because he was _Bucky_ , and that might be foolish of him, but it was true. He trusted him, but in many ways Bucky was as skittish and flighty as an wild stallion; one too many question and he could disappear through Steve's window again forever.

So Steve didn't ask. He didn't question where they were going. When Bucky told him to bring his Glock, he did. When he told him to meet him on the curb of Arlan Street seven blocks from his apartment building, Steve met him.

And when Bucky told him to jump illegally onto his illegally-driving Harley, he did so. Some wrong, Steve had realised, was necessary for the greater right.

They headed south. Down roads that Steve recognised and then into those he didn't. Cold air whipped his face as they drove, descending empty alleyways rather than streaking along highways, and only swerving between late-night drivers when necessary.

Far. That was all Steve deduced they drew after forty-five minutes of wordless driving. Forty-five minutes and then some. The alleys Bucky roared down with the unerring turns of one long familiar with the area were lit by even less than the streetlamps. The absence of a headlight was made even more apparent for that darkness, and then more so again when they left the limits of New York City to continue even further south. _Out_ of the city, and away from everything.

Steve might have been scared. He might have been – but he hadn't been truly scared for a long time.

Down a highway, weaving swiftly – and still illegally – through the similarly city-departing. Across a bridge that Steve recognised from passing over barely a handful of times himself. South and south, and then the spread of borderless streets trickled into those watched with quiet regard by silent, blank-eyes houses. The houses remained for long enough to dribble into a region distinctly industrial. Steve watched his surroundings pass with keen attentiveness; if nothing else, he'd ensure he could make it back there in the future.

Bucky drove them past a wall of dark brick building, windowless on the lower three floors. Past a water tower, looming and stoic. Along another alley, the guttering the Harley's engine rebounding off the tall walls along either side of them, and then out onto a span of openness eerily cavernous despite the lack of buildings.

Bucky slowed the bike to a stall and Steve silently climbed off. The night seemed forebodingly quiet in the absence of the bike's engine.

Steve could guess where they were. He had a good enough sense of direction for that, at least. "This is," he began. Then he paused because Bucky glanced towards him.

They hadn't spoken of it expressly, not aloud, but Steve wasn't stupid. He didn't think of himself as a genius – not like Tony who could rattle off mathematical theorems in his sleep, or Vision who all but spoke in binary – but he knew he was smart enough. And he might not be able to make deductions like Clint, but this was apparent enough; what Bucky was showing him, what he was doing that night, was off the record. It 'wasn't happening'. It was why Bucky was never the one to speak names. It was why he didn't tell Steve what they were doing.

Steve had to deduce for himself – about Zola, about where they were going, and about just what Bucky was showing him, all so that he could force himself to remember the important bits.

Steve pressed his lips together, and though they were only illuminated by the distant glare of night pollution, by the half-waxed moon hanging suspended overhead, he saw Bucky's acknowledgement. Knew that he understood Steve's acceptance of the need for silence.

Bucky plucked his keys from the Harley, thrust them into his pocket, and turned on his heel with a sharp scrape of his boots on concrete. Steve cast a quick glance around them – open parking lot that might not have even been a parking lot, more of the distant, murky-coloured buildings with high windows, a dark and possibly abandoned car fifty feet away – before thrusting his hands into his pockets and following after him. He was abruptly glad he'd worn his own heavy jacket, hood and all; the chill that settled upon him lay in more than just the air.

There weren't any buildings that Bucky headed towards. At first, Steve didn't know where he was being led at all – not because he didn't trust Bucky, because he did, but because there simply wasn't anything to see. Then Bucky stepped from the concrete of the parking lot, took several striding steps into the tufts of grass and smears of dehydrated dirt, and cast a swiping kick at the ground.

Steve didn't ask. He didn't ask 'what' or 'where'. He simply watched through the darkness as Bucky squatted on the ground and scratched at the dirt with his gloved left hand. Then, with an unexpected an almighty heave, he hauled at something that squeaked slightly as it rose. It was the only sound to interrupt the distant hum of cruising traffic.

A door. Or a hatch, Steve supposed. Stepping to Bucky's side where he still silently squatted, Steve peered down into a hole in the ground that he wouldn't have noticed had he Bucky not led him straight to it. The hole was a circle of metal, barely two feet across, and circular. Steve could only see the top rung of an embedded ladder before they disappeared into darker blackness.

He felt his gut tighten. Missions had found Steve in countless tight situations, heart pounding, blood pumping, and muscles straining for the tension, both physical and mental. Steve could almost claim he was used to it; in a way, as a field officer in a specialist force, he was.

But this was different. It was different undertaking an operation in cold blood. It was so vastly different slipping through the night, through the darkness that masked their presence, and sneaking into criminal territory. Steve could overlook the legalities of the trespassing for who those criminals were, but he still felt uneasy. He still fought the urge to shift in place, to glance over his shoulder and squint for the phantom watcher that he could feel standing behind him from the prickling on the nape of his neck.

Exhaling sharply, his breath puffing in a thin, barely visible cloud, Steve lowered himself onto his haunches at Bucky's side. "This is it?"

Bucky didn't look at him. He hadn't quite looked at Steve since he'd first told him to meet him three blocks from Steve's apartment nights before. Steve watched him sidelong as Bucky regarded the hatch, lips pressed firmly together and a muscle twitching just visibly beneath the shadows blurring his jaw. He nodded shortly.

"The doctor?"

Another nod.

Steve dropped his gaze to the hatch. "This isn't the only entrance, is it?"

Slowly, Bucky shook his head. "No. Just the one I use."

"The one you use?"

"When I'm ordered to visit. The doctor requests seeing me sometimes. As a check-up, if you will."

The way he said it informed Steve that Bucky was far from fond of such check-ups, if nothing else. That it wasn't a simple doctor's visit. That Bucky didn't _want_ to go, and that as Steve was realising more and more – as he'd found himself hoping yet hated now that he knew it was true – Bucky didn't really have a choice in the matter. He was ordered, and he did what he was told because he had to.

 _Because he has to,_ Steve thought harshly, and his fingers curled where they rested on his knees. Bucky said he owed HYDRA, or owed someone _in_ HYDRA for 'saving his life' in a way that Steve still didn't understand. But this went further than owing. What kind of a person demanded regular assassinations as payment?

It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. None of it was. And Bucky… Steve didn't say as much, but Bucky seemed to know it. He professed that nothing _was_ fair, but that it didn't matter. And yet here they were, and despite his loyalty to HYDRA –

"I'm not turning them over to you," Bucky said, breaking into Steve's thoughts. His voice was so low as to be nearly unintelligible, and he still didn't look at Steve. "You know I can't be the one to do it."

"I know," Steve said, barely a whisper.

Bucky nodded slowly. "Just so you do," he said, then he edged forwards, slung a leg into the hatch, and twisted to start his descent.

"If this isn't the only way in," Steve began, and Bucky paused.

"Don't be an idiot, Steve," he said and finally, finally, he glanced up at him. His left hand clinked faintly, metallically, on the top rung of the ladder. "Even with all of your SHIELD people and that drug-busting squad, you wouldn't make it in that way. Ever."

Steve never asked how Bucky knew so much of SHIELD. He never asked how he knew anything, because that would be pushing for a conversation that would shut down their question-and-answering in a heartbeat. This time, too, Steve didn't ask – not about Bucky's knowledge or the other entrance. He believed him in that regard. Bucky hadn't lied to him yet.

Claustrophobia enveloped Steve as, after Bucky disappeared into the hatch with only the barest scuffle of sound to mark his descent, Steve followed after him. He could feel the tunnel at his back, the faint grittiness of rust on the rungs beneath his gloved fingers. The night above had never seemed to bright yet so distant as it disappeared into utter blackness.

It was a relief when his feet touched the ground. Concrete, Steve felt through the soles of his boots. In a cavernous space, he also gauged, given the faint echoing of his breath.

"Bucky?" he whispered, and that too echoed.

When fingers touched Steve's arm, he didn't quite flinch. Almost, but not quite, and likely would have been greater had it been more than the barest of touches. Which was also likely why Bucky had withheld.

"Follow me," Bucky's voice murmured through the darkness, and then he touched Steve's arm again, urging him forwards slightly, and drew away. Steve followed silently, dutifully, as Bucky's footsteps retreated.

Steve didn't know how Bucky saw. Or maybe he didn't see at all but instead simply knew the way so well that he didn't need his eyes. Steve stared with fierce attentiveness into the darkness before him, ears straining for the sound of Bucky's steps even if he didn't truly believe that he would be left behind. It was a relief when the darkness, the stillness, and the deeper chill of hard concrete and walls of a similar hardness, was alleviated just slightly by a distant light.

Then Steve felt them turn a corner.

The corridor – and it was concrete, Steve saw as they progressed into greater lightness; the floor, the walls, even the ceiling – stood a foot above Steve's head. It stretched into a bare hallway of similar size with only a single door and throbbing yellow light stationed above it. The corridor extended barely twenty feet beyond the door until it branched to the left and disappeared into similarly throbbing light; the promise of more doors, more lights.

Steve registered the facts: Bucky was leading him to Zola's lair of sorts, his lab, his base. Zola was an infamous if scarcely known member of HYDRA, and in New York City, HYDRA stood at the head of the illegal drug industry in its production of synthetic heroin. Bucky had said he climbed through the hatch for his 'check-ups', which meant that something had to be here, wouldn't it? Evidence, files on members of HYDRA, enough to pin them with the blame and arrest to them on sight?

Yet at the same time as the facts flooded through him, Steve felt himself chill. This was a _HYDRA_ base. There could be _HYDRA_ here, and though he wasn't quite scared, Steve had dealt with HYDRA enough to be thoroughly wary of them. He'd followed Bucky straight into the snake pit.

Steve should have called for back up. He couldn't have, didn't think Bucky would have taken him half as far with the rest of SHIELD following on their tail, but he wished he had. The weight of his Glock at the small of his back was reassuring, but not much.

Bucky had paused in step as they drew towards the door and its overhead light. Just outside of the greater sphere of light, he turned towards Steve. His expression was sombre in a way that would have spat in the face of his childhood self's brightness, and it chilled Steve further with certainty of the danger that he already knew himself to be in.

With deliberate hands, Bucky reached behind his head and shucked the hood of his jumper from beneath the collar of his leather jacket. He wordlessly indicated for Steve to do the same of himself before reaching into a pocket and extracting a pair of mottled grey scarves. He held one out to Steve. "You know how to tie it so it doesn't fall off?"

Steve felt the ridiculous urge to smile. Was Bucky really mothering him? Here? But he didn't, and he nodded, following suit once more as Bucky tied his scarf around the lower half of his face with practiced fingers. When he dropped his hands, it was to regard Steve critically before nodding shortly.

"You get your evidence," Bucky said, his voice a slightly muffled murmur. "I'm not handing you anything –"

"I know you're not, Buck," Steve said, acknowledging what they both knew as being a fallacy.

Bucky nodded shortly once more. "You've got your gadgets or whatever, don't you? 'Cause we're not coming back again after this time. I'm not bringing you back."

Steve nodded in reply, his hands dropping to his pockets. He hadn't known where Bucky was taking him, so he'd brought as much as he could carry on his person; a miniature, hi-res camera of Tony's make, his phone, an old-fashioned lock pick, a pair of gloves he tugged on after the scarf, and the firearm that he hoped he wouldn't have to use. Steve wasn't trigger happy – he never _wanted_ to shoot anyone – but he would if he had to. He would shoot a HYDRA snake if he had to, even if he wasn't quite so ready to do so as he'd been in the past.

"I know," he said. "I wouldn't ask you to, Buck."

Bucky turned away from him then. Without another word, he started towards the illuminated door.

That was how it happened. That was how Steve got his first glimpse of an active HYDRA hideout that wasn't left upheaval as its residents attempted to slip through NYPD fingers. As Bucky tapped a code into the keypad beside the door with his metal hand, Steve saw the first room.

It was empty but for a bed. Not unclean. Not uncomfortable. Just a bed with neatly folded blankets. Steve took pictures.

Around the corner, through the brief hint of deeper darkness then back into another sphere of light, was another room. Another bed. Steve took his pictures.

There were more rooms. Some were completely empty. Some held a table with chairs, and there wasn't anything brutal or cruel about them. Nothing that reeked of criminals. They were bare, minimalistic, of good, solid make and… nothing else. They passed cameras, black little spiders planted in the corners of the corridors, but Bucky didn't pause before them. Steve trusted he ignored them for a reason and focused upon his task.

Until Steve saw the room with the chair.

It was the first one they came across that was different. The first one that was more. The concrete beneath their feet had faded at some indiscernible point – frustratingly indiscernible, because Steve should have mentally recorded exactly where – and the dips from light into darkness had become expected. Seven doors, they'd passed. Seven doors without a word between them, and Bucky would wait as Steve drew his miniature camera from his pocket, would snap his pictures and check to be sure they were being sent to the SHIELD basement on Tony's unrestricted line, and pass to the next.

Outside that door – door number eight – Bucky paused.

Steve stared at the back of his head, at the mess of overlong hair that wasn't quite a tangle but held a certain degree of carelessness. Bucky didn't move, didn't glance over his shoulder, and his finger hovered statically over the keypad lock.

"Bucky?" Steve asked quietly.

Bucky shifted slightly. Just slightly, the barest of leans and the barest twitch of a finger. Then he tapped the numbers into the keypad; Steve watched with the same attentiveness he had to every other door: six-seven-six-one.

Steve didn't know what he was looking at when he first stepped into the room. Bucky edged to the side to allow him to pass, arms folding as he had at every other room, and Steve was left to stare at the mess of machines, the half-reclined chair in the very centre, the overhead light that hung suspended above that chair, shuttered and dark in sleep. A trolley with a metal tray rested to one side, glaringly clean, and what looked almost like an oxygen mask dangled from a cord beside the headrest. A screen – a computer screen? – hung black-faced and silent upon an arm, pushed away from the central seating station.

Steve frowned. He could still feel tension thrumming through him, still felt the urge to whisper rather than talk, but he could think without straining his ears for the barest hint of an intruder's approach. He glanced over his shoulder to Bucky. "What is this?"

Bucky was staring at the chair. Or maybe at the light, or the trolley, or the blank computer screen. He didn't glance towards Steve at his question, but he'd clearly heard it. With a casual, almost offhanded gesture, Bucky raised his real hand and tapped absently upon his shoulder.

His metal shoulder. Upon his –

"This?" Steve glanced back towards the chair, towards the machines that he couldn't identify. There was nothing telling about their structure or their positioning. They weren't poorly crafted as far as Steve could tell, but this… "They put your arm on here?"

"Put it on," Bucky said quietly. "After taking the other one off. Yeah."

"An underground –"

"Amputation studio, yes," Bucky said. "Welcome to the gig, Rogers."

Steve's eyes darted across the machines. It truly wasn't as dirty as he might have imagined from off-the-grid surgery studios. The machines weren't cheap, which Steve could recognise from Tony's education of the basics. But there was something macabre about the entire structure; maybe it was the darkness, the emptiness, the lack of activity that Steve would anticipate in such a context. Maybe it was because he could imagine – horribly, enough that he almost flinched – Bucky sitting in that seat and… and…

"They took your arm off here," Steve said quietly. "That's…" For a moment, words abandoned him, and the most stupid, foolish, irrelevant one arose in the absence of anything else. "Illegal."

He felt more than heard Bucky shift slightly behind him. "You done staring? Take your pictures, Steve, or I'm leaving you behind."

Bucky wouldn't. Steve knew he wouldn't leave him, because, though he'd done just that so long ago, he wouldn't again. Steve wouldn't let him. He had so many questions – about Bucky's arm, about HYDRA as always, but about Bucky's involvement as much as HYDRA itself – but he didn't voice them.

Steve took his pictures.

There were other studios. Other rooms that made little sense to Steve. He wasn't a doctor, but he could recognise medical equipment when he saw it, and the bunker was all but clogged with it. It had to be illegal, and Steve snapped pictures of everything, pointedly ignoring his imagination that sought to contemplate just what had happened on that operating table, this chair, in that room that required a viewing station. Bucky had said Zola liked to experiment. Just what the hell kind of experiments did Zola conduct?

Such thoughts were shunted to the side of Steve's mind, however, when Bucky led him into one particular cavernous room. It was wide, sleek, floors cleanly tiled and walls painted a glaring white. Steve hardly noticed that whiteness. He barely noticed that overhead lights only feebly lit the room itself, too. Stepping past Bucky's usual point of observation and into the room, Steve stared.

"I trust you know what you're looking at?" Bucky said.

Steve nodded slowly. He knew what he was looking at.

Vats. Bulbous, heavy vats, and half a dozen of them spread about the room. Sinks lined the walls, runners of narrow counters scrubbed clean and empty but for the occasional similarly empty glass beaker or plastic tub. Steve edged further into the room and, with a glance over his shoulder that wasn't really asking Bucky for permission, lifted the lid on one of the vats.

A rush of scent, both somehow overwhelming and faint, flooded his nostrils. Distinctly chemical, Steve could place it in a heartbeat. Morphine didn't especially have a smell, and neither did heroin from Steve's experience, but the tang of vinegar was just slightly detectable.

"Don't dip your finger in that," Bucky said in a quiet monotone. "It'll be a bitch dragging you out of here."

Steve didn't glance his way. "How far along is it?" he asked quietly.

"Are you asking me a question?"

This time Steve did turn. Bucky's chin was dropped to his chest again, his eyes blank above his scarf, and yet despite that blankness it was apparent what he was thinking. What he was feeling. Steve had spent too much time with Bucky, too many nights staring at him through the darkness of his bedroom, to mistake what he was thinking at least in part.

Bucky wouldn't look at him. He never admitted he was scared, but…

"You won't be compromised," Steve said. Or murmured, even without intention. "When this gets out, you'll be left out of it. I guarantee it."

Bucky snorted but he did raise his gaze. Just briefly, and just enough to quirk an eyebrow alongside it before dropping it again into further expressionlessness. "It's not you and yours I'm worried about," he said, and Steve nodded his understanding. Bucky might not be scared, but if he was it was clear that HYDRA was the one who induced it rather than the NYPD. "But in answer to your question – fuck if I know. I don't take the stuff."

"You don't?"

"I'm not that stupid, Steve."

 _I didn't think you were,_ Steve thought, but he didn't speak. He didn't admit how relieved he was that Bucky didn't, though he was. So unutterably relieved that he felt himself sag slightly in relief from a weight he hadn't even known he carried.

Bucky clearly saw it leave him. "You're a bit of a sap, you know that?"

"Because I've just been assured my boyfriend isn't a heroin addict?"

"We're not having the boyfriend discussion right now," Bucky said, muffled exasperation touching his tone. "Seriously. Now?"

"Well, are you?" Steve said, and despite the circumstances, despite the fact that he was even then leaning over a vat of stewing heroin, he felt himself smile. They'd never talked about it, not expressly, and Steve abruptly regretted that fact. _When we get out of here…_

"Are you asking me another question?" Bucky said. "Because you're tipping the hundred mark right now, you know."

Steve shook his head as he lowered the lid on the vat. "Not now," he said, glancing back to where Bucky had raised his gaze to regard him intently. "Just for you to think about. For later."

Bucky snorted a little less profusely this time. He could have even been smiling behind the scarf. "Take your pictures, Steve."

Steve took his pictures.

There were more rooms. More with vats, some with wall-to-wall shelves of bottles, boxes, glass containers, and measuring devices. Others contained only storage material, and Steve glimpsed one that appeared to be nothing if not a room-sized dishwasher, the scent of soap hanging in the air and the floor damp. Steve had already deduced that the bunker-base was huge, had seen the evidence of it himself in the rabbit warren of corridors – empty, blessedly empty – branching off into single locked rooms. His inventory of pictures was likely clogging up Tony's drive at the basement; he'd be in for a surprise the next day.

Door number twenty-two was when he first heard the sound of a distant voice. The corridor had widened into a pale, glowing hall that resembled nothing if not a deserted hospital cleared of machinery, trolleys, and waiting gurneys. Steve could almost forget that he was underground at all.

At the first hint of a voice, Bucky reached behind himself, grabbed onto Steve's shoulder, and hauled him towards the closest door. It was all Steve could do not to snap to attention, to unwind himself from Bucky's hold and retaliate with a strike. The beep of the electronic lock sounded and the door clicked behind them.

Bucky was against him, pinning him to the wall and a hand pressing against the scarf at Steve's mouth. "The night-watch," he murmured.

Steve stared at him. He would always stare when Bucky stood so close, even in a situation that had his muscles tensing and heart skipping a beat for the sudden severity of their circumstances. It was habit now to look at Bucky and only him, to be all too aware of the heat of his presence against him. It was almost a struggle, a war with instinct that had somehow overwhelmed the instinct Steve had developed on the force for years, to thrust aside the urge to simply lean forwards and kiss him.

"Guards?" Steve whispered.

Bucky offered his customary snort, though it came out as little more than a puff of breath. "Not anything quite so prestigious as that. But they do have a pair of eyes."

Steve fell silent for a moment, ears straining for the slightest noise. Then he continued with a whispered, "You took out the cameras?"

A statement, not a question. Bucky hummed. "It was necessary."

"You prepared all of this, didn't you? To bring me here?"

"You wouldn't be here if I wasn't prepared."

Steve nodded. Fair enough. He could understand the necessity for that much at least.

They stood for a long pause, Steve listening, Bucky with his head cocked as though listening too. Then Bucky drew away from him as if by a signal that Steve couldn't discern. "We need to get out of here."

Steve nodded, even if he didn't quite agree. "How far in are we?"

Bucky glanced towards him from where he'd turned briefly towards the rest of the room. "About halfway. You're getting to the offices now."

"The offices?"

Bucky tipped his head to the room. "This is Karpov's."

Steve followed the direction of his nod. The room was… an office. The spread of a desk. A high-backed chair. A computer that was the only item atop that desk. A wall of shelving stood against the far wall, stacked with heavy books and an assortment of personalised items that didn't seem all that personalised at all; a glass ornament, a bowl with a fake flower inside, a contraption made of something that looked vaguely metallic through the gloom. A faintly luminescent orb – was it a light? – was the only thing illuminating the darkness.

An office. Just an office.

"Karpov?" Steve asked.

"You don't know him."

"Yet?"

"Yet."

There was something in Bucky's voice that was almost resentful. Something that didn't touch his expression, but Steve saw nonetheless. It sounded almost the same as how he spoke of the doctor, Zola. Steve immediately hated the man. "What did he do to you?"

Bucky only shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

"Bucky –"

"Not now, Steve." And the 'or ever' was heard alongside it. "We've got to go."

Steve nodded slowly, then more rapidly in acceptance. He didn't _want_ to accept it, but it was necessary. "Alright. We'll go. I'll ask my questions –"

"You always do."

" – later, but we'll go. After," and Steve turned and started towards the desk, "I get what I can from this."

The computer was encoded. Of course it was. And Bucky didn't know how to get into it either – "Steve, how the hell would I know?" "You've known the codes to every door thus far." "This is different." – which was a problem. But that didn't matter. Steve pulled out the final item from his pocket, his final 'gadget' as Bucky called it, the one that Tony had built, that Vision had advised upon, that Nat used on a regular basis. He plugged it into the computer.

"What is that?" Bucky asked.

"SHIELD stuff."

"Is it good?"

"It's a Stark product. You've heard of him."

"Stark," Bucky murmured. "You mean Howard Stark?"

Steve chewed upon his words for a moment, staring at the resistant screen of the computer opened before him. "His son. Tony."

"Huh. So you're working with billionaires now."

"Only their children."

The screen flickered, a strange stutter like a spark of static. Then, in the otherwise blankness of that screen, an image appeared. Small, flashing – the Stark symbol, barely discernible for its size. Steve didn't know the first thing about Tony's inventions besides the fact that they worked for him to use. He wasn't computer illiterate, but such progressiveness passed over his head. This, though – he knew it worked. Nat used it, after all.

"Is it getting anything?" Bucky asked in a murmur, standing planted with arms folded and staring at the computer at Steve's side.

"I reckon it is."

"You can tell?"

"That's what it usually does."

Bucky didn't speak until, after a long pause of silent staring at the screen, Steve glanced towards him. His eyebrow was slightly raised and he regarded Steve rather than the computer. "You involved in espionage much, Rogers?"

Steve smiled behind his scarf. "Not really," he muttered. "I'd rather get into the thick of things."

"Really? Wouldn't have picked it of you."

Steve smothered a chuckle.

He didn't know how long he had. He didn't know how long Tony's device would take to work. Steve didn't know if it could grab everything, or if the invisible cyber tentacles would be able to bypass the firewalls certainly installed. They had in the past, but the past was different. This was important, because Steve didn't know if he'd get the chance to break in again.

He didn't know this Karpov, but he could hope that anyone with an office and a guarded computer in the middle of a HYDRA base had to know _something_.

Steve would have waited forever, perhaps, except that Bucky heard something that he didn't. Or maybe his agitation went beyond what Steve perceived of him and he decided he'd waited long enough. "Steve, we're leaving."

"Now?"

"Now."

Steve pressed his lips together. Stark's symbol still flashed in taunting regret and Steve stared at it for a long moment before Bucky twitched at his side. He actually twitched. Then Steve yanked the drive it from the computer and strode after Bucky as Bucky in turn slipped silently to the door.

They made it from the office. They made it a whole two corridors from the office in the direction they'd come. Steve thought they might have even evaded the unseen guards, despite Bucky's persisting tension.

That was until an overloud and demanding cry of "Halt!" echoed off the empty walls around them.

"Run," Bucky ordered.

They ran.

* * *

It would have been a miracle had they made it from the base without a fight. Steve didn't really believe in miracles. Second chances, maybe, but not miracles.

Or at least he didn't _really_ believe in miracles, but watching Bucky as he took out a trio of guards in a matter of seconds using nothing but his fists – Steve had to admit he was beginning to believe in the supernatural just a little bit.

They made it down three corridors, arcing around corners and leaping down the next with the slap of their footsteps their only company. Steve's hand rested compulsively on his pocket, upon Tony's gadget and the camera that was stashed there. The pictures would surely have been enough to incriminate the HYDRA base, but Steve was still neurotic – in this instance, if nothing else.

But the guards had spread. In the time Steve and Bucky had been in the Karpov's office, the guards had passed beyond the door in the only direction they could have taken through the labyrinthine underground nest. Steve should have expected it, but, pounding the tiled floors in Bucky's wake as they flowed into hard concrete instead, he still jerked when they came upon them. Steve still slowed, step catching for a moment because _Should I attack them?_

Bucky didn't slow.

He was upon them in an instant. All three of them strode down the corridor, carbines – actual carbines, and ridiculous for close quarters – unslung from their shoulders and hanging casually from their hands. They'd turned at the sound of Steve and Bucky's appearance, and the man in the middle managed a bark in sharp German. _"Was bist du -?"_

Bucky was upon him. He slammed into the man, and in an instant, the speaker's words choked into a grunt. Bucky grabbed him, spun into a half crouch, and the man sailed over his shoulder with a swing of Bucky's arm. The crack of his impact as he struck the ground rung through Steve to his bones.

The carbines rose and Steve was leaping forward, grabbing for his Glock. He didn't need to. He didn't even get the chance to raise it before Bucky was on the next one, all but flying through the air and launching a roundhouse kick that sent a second man flying into the wall. The third trained his carbine, but –

Bucky caught it. With his metallic hand, he caught the gun, jerked it in his hand, and it snapped _._ It actually _snapped._

" _Soldat? Fick_ -!" The man began, then he toppled to the ground. Steve couldn't blame him; the force of Bucky's fist to his face likely would have induced just the same effect from the hardiest man.

The three guards were felled. Steve darted his gaze between them – the one gasping and only half conscious on his back, the second crumpled in a heap beside the wall, the third with blood spurting from his nose and dribbling down either side of his face.

The Glock rested unused in Steve's hands. He hadn't really intended to use it, only to threaten, but to know that even that was unnecessary was… it was unnerving. For a long second, Steve stared at Bucky, at where Bucky stood in the middle of his toppled opponents that had been more like bowling pins than foes. He wasn't even breathing heavily.

"Bucky," Steve said quietly, and Bucky glanced towards him, his eyes dark and flat above the concealing weight of his scarf. "How did you -?"

"Not now," Bucky said shortly.

"Your _arm_ ," Steve said, a hint of demand, of urgency, to his words. "Bucky, you snapped the –"

"Steve, we're leaving," Bucky overrode him, and he turned on his heel to start in the opposite direction. Back the way they'd come. Steve understood that there was no leeway this time when he broke into a run without a backwards glance. Bucky wouldn't leave him behind, Steve knew, but he didn't want to be dragged after him either.

They nearly made it back to the first door they'd come across, its throbbing yellow light a beacon, when the alarm sounded. It began as a sudden, deafening wail, not even vaguely distant, and Steve spun in an instant. His Glock rose almost instinctively.

Bucky's hand clamped upon his shoulder. "Don't wait," he said, voice barely audible over the siren.

Steve snapped a glance his way. "But they're –"

"Don't. Wait." Bucky was almost glaring down the corridor in their wake.

"They'll know you?" Steve asked, then realised he didn't need to ask. "They'll know you. How many people in HYDRA can snap a gun with their bare hand."

"It doesn't matter," Bucky said, yanking him backwards a step.

"Bucky –"

"It doesn't matter, Steve. We're leaving." And then he really was. Diving into the darkness, Bucky disappeared almost immediately. Steve could either truly be left behind or follow in his wake.

He followed. Steve was always following Bucky in some way or another.

The night seemed colder as Steve hauled himself into it. Wider. Cleaner, after the claustrophobia of the underground, the corridors, the climb through the tunnel. Quieter, too, and Steve couldn't even hear the faintest echo of a siren from the hatch. Just how far down did it reach?

He didn't pause to ask Bucky, and mostly because Bucky was urging him from the hatch in a sweeping gesture of his hand. The metal lid clanged shut violently, the scuff of dirt from Bucky's swiped foot smothering the echoing ring. Then they were away.

Running.

Running, because Steve didn't trust that a hatch and a climb would be enough of a barrier between himself and HYDRA. Not with the pictures and the potential intelligence that he'd stolen.

They ran, then they were driving, and the empty parking lot, the smear of dark buildings, and the silence of the industrial area, was behind them. Steve spared a glance over his shoulder, down the stretch of mangled road that faded into smooth bitumen the further they fled away. Would the have tails? Would they be chased? He didn't know.

Clinging to Bucky's jacket, Steve grimly set his jaw and turned from the abandoned lot. He knew the location, if it would still even be there by the time he could rustle SHIELD together. He would be back.

The trip back to New York City and the street three blocks from Steve's house seemed longer than that going out. Steve wasn't sure what the time was, hadn't checked how long they'd been in the bunker for, and he didn't check throughout the drive. Holding onto Bucky, he bit his tongue on the torrent of questions that longed to spill forth on likely selectively-deaf ears. Bucky didn't glance towards him, but he still wondered. He still considered as he stared at Bucky's metal fingers curled around the grip of the Harley's handlebar.

When they slowed to a stop, Bucky didn't follow Steve as he unslung himself from the pillion. Leaning forward upon the handlebars, he drew his gaze from their downturned stare only to glance the way they'd come. A brief glance, something that seemed almost a nervous tick.

Steve didn't think Bucky got scared, or at least not in the conventional sense of the term, for conventional triggers, but he was clearly unsettled. It birthed only more questions, and Steve couldn't help but ask. In the relative quiet of the curb-side, folding his arms across his chest, Steve stared at Bucky unwaveringly as the words slipped out almost without his intention.

"Why? Why would you do this?"

"Steve –"

"They'll know who you are," Steve said, and abruptly he realised that his head was throbbing. Not in pain, but with something that felt a lot like fury; like anger and frustration and something that felt very much like fear that had nothing to do with himself. "There's no way they won't recognise it was you, even with that scarf on. What was it that man called you? _Soldat_ , was it? Soldier? Bucky, unless HYRDA has invested in an army of hitmen with cybernetic arms, I'm pretty sure they'll know who's responsible."

Bucky didn't look up at him. That more than anything else was indication of his unease. Bucky always stared at Steve with the watchful eyes of a wary predator, but that night he'd barely spared him a glance. He shook his head shortly. "It doesn't matter. They'll overlook it."

Steve huffed his disbelief. "They'd _overlook_ – "

"It wouldn't be the first time I've snapped like a madman and they've had to deal with it. Stop freaking out."

Steve swallowed. Not the first time? And 'snapped like a madman'? What did that mean, exactly? Steve wanted to know, as he always did, but at the same time he was almost certain he didn't want to hear of it at all. What could make Bucky snap? How bad could it be that he _would_ snap?

"They won't let you go unpunished," Steve said quietly through clenched teeth. "Don't think I'm so stupid as to believe they would."

Bucky shrugged. "I knew that going into this," he said.

So simple. So blunt, and without even a question to incite it. Bucky's words slapped Steve like a blow to the face. He stared at where Bucky stood before him, arms leaning on his handlebars and head bowed between them. "Then why do it? Why would you do it?"

"Don't ask stupid questions."

"It's not a stupid question."

Bucky scoffed in what definitely wasn't a laugh, and dragged his gaze to the side. He regarded the road of their wake with slightly narrowed eyes, as though daring their passage to admit any potential pursuers. Then he shook his head slightly. "It's not that I give a fuck about killing people," he muttered in what Steve knew was a lie because Bucky, _his_ Bucky, cared even if he didn't let himself believe he did. "I've done too much of it to bother me anymore. But that doesn't mean I know it's not wrong, and that some people – _some_ people have a problem with that." He regarded Steve flatly without raising his head. "Guess I've always been a sucker for your stupid face."

"What?" Steve asked, frowning.

"Fuck, you're so stupid sometimes, Steve."

"Tell me," Steve said, and he wasn't sure which part he was referring to – Bucky's words, or those he hadn't said.

Bucky finally turned his regard from the road to Steve. His face might as well have been carved from stone, and Steve saw in that moment that there was so much – _so much_ – that Bucky knew, that he'd done, that he _was_ , that Steve still didn't understand. Not yet, anyway. It hurt a little to realise.

Then Bucky spoke and all such thoughts were shunted to the back of Steve's mind. "You've got more than a lot on your plate, Steve. HYDRA – that's what they're called here, but not everywhere. They're not just in New York; you've got to know that, right?" He stared at Steve with his familiar unblinking intentness. "Surely you know that. They're an infection, and New York's just gotten hit by it more recently."

"What are you talking about?" Steve said, hearing the policeman's command trickle into his words. He didn't mean to, but that was the way it was; this was abruptly all business.

Bucky didn't pull him up on it. For once, he didn't make a jibe about foolish and arrogant officers and how they were hypocrites when they weren't simply blindly righteous. "Like you always are," Bucky would say.

Except that instead, with that unwavering stare that seemed to block out everything else from Steve's world, Bucky continued. "They were birthed in Germany. Prussia it was at the time, if you can believe it. Dropped by Switzerland and that's where they found the doctor. About up in _Россия_ –" he paused and said something distinctly Russian that sounded as fierce as Nat's curses, " – then bled over into the US. This is just the tail end of it."

Steve shook his head slowly. Such a possibility, so far reaching, was inconceivable. "That's…"

"That's what happened," Bucky said, and spared another glance over his shoulder. Steve hadn't heard anything but he looked too. "They go way back. Early twentieth century."

"I don't…" Steve began, but it wasn't in denial. Disbelief made his skin tingle, his heartbeat throb in his head. The darkness grew suddenly sharper, more detailed, and yet darker. What Bucky was saying…

It was so much bigger than he'd imagined. So much bigger as to be impossible – and yet it wasn't. Steve believed Bucky. He'd always believe him. He hadn't gleaned much from Zola's files, and his German and French was spotty at best, but he believed it. It was just _unbelievable_ that such a thing could span beyond what already plagued New York. HYDRA had been a presence in the criminal world, an organisation targeted by SHIELD and the force as a whole, for nearly ten years. They were villains, leaving destruction and disaster in their wake. That it would extend _beyond_ the city…?

Steve believed Bucky – he just wished it wasn't true. It made the prospect of HYRA all the greater and all the harder to destroy. Steve found himself reaching for the drive stuffed in his pocket, just to feel the outline of its shape. To know it was still there.

Bucky saw him do it. Steve saw as Bucky watched him trace the shape. The tension rippling off of Bucky's shoulders was tangible, and even more so when, after another glance over his shoulder, he folded his arms across his chest.

"You're a good little policeman, right, Steve?" Bucky said, pinning him with his stare, dark and intent and insistent. "This's what you do. You protect your city and take these HYDRA bastards down 'cause I sure as fuck can't do it myself. This head they've got sticking all the way out to New York?" He shook his own slightly. "This isn't anything on what they've already done to the cities they've left behind them."

"You've seen them?" Steve asked, and his voice was so hushed it was almost a croak.

Bucky's expression, impossibly, hardened even further. "I've seen them. And I'll tell you this: I'm never fucking going back to Russia."

* * *

The SHIELD basement was empty. Startlingly empty, and not because Steve hadn't seen it so before. He'd woken up alone in the basement with only a blanket draped over him by an altruistic colleague just as he'd draped them over his friends countless times himself.

It was startling because so much had happened that night. Steve had learned so much – too much, even – and it was throwing him. HYDRA was huge. It was impossibly huge, and as slippery as a snake. It had seemed an impossible task to Steve for years, and despite sticking to his morals and trying and trying and _trying_ , he'd half accepted it as much. To learn the HYDRA didn't even stop at his own city?

Steve was only a policeman. A member of a special force, perhaps, but only that. He'd never heard that 'only' quite so loudly as he did in that moment.

Striding through the darkness and ignoring the splutter of lights that flared to life at his presence – courtesy of Tony's installations – he made his way to Fury's office. All the lines in the SHIELD basement were supposed to be secure, but Fury's, Steve knew, would be doubly so. More than that, Fury would know immediately that something was up should Steve call him from his own phone.

Which he did. Fury picked up on the second ring.

"You better have a good reason," he said shortly.

"Fury," Steve said by way of greeting. "We need to talk."

Fury was instantly attentive. Steve heard it in his silence, in the way he didn't snap back another condescending retort. Steve only had a moment to pause, to think of what he was going to say – about Zola, about Bucky – before his tongue was speaking for him. "I got a lead."

"Who?" Fury said, attentiveness even sharper. Typical of Fury, he didn't waste time with asking the 'how's and the 'what's. 'Who' was infinitely more relevant in determining the usefulness of the intel.

Except Steve shook his head. "It doesn't matter. But it's legit. And we need everyone on deck right now."

It was a testament to how much faith Fury put in his operatives that he didn't question further. There was a moment of static silence, then Fury grunted. "Hold fast, Rogers. Stay put right where you are."

"I'll call –"

"I've got it handled," Fury interrupted him. "You hold fast. I'll have the team pull ranks immediately."

Then he hung up. The line deadened in Steve's hand and he was left holding the worn plastic, staring into the dark chaos that was Fury's office. To think of everything HYDRA and everything Bucky.

And wait.


	8. Chapter 8

"But you're certain? You're absolutely certain?"

"There's no way to be _absolutely certain_ without every single one of us in this room having seen it with our very eyes."

"Then how could we just –?"

"When have we ever needed such confirmation before, hm? When have we ever needed such holistic certainty?"

"But this is different. What you're asking is _huge_."

Steve listened with half an ear. The meeting in Conference Room One had endured for nearly two hours, and it had long since descended into arguments that trekked around and around in circles.

_This is the information. This is what we've discovered. This is what we think we should do._

_How? Pull ranks, of course. How we always do it. Yes, that means everyone._

_Of course, everyone. Do you have any idea the scale of the operation we're dealing with?_

_Rogers is reliable. I don't care if he can't name his source – no, I said I don't care. Time is of the essence._

_Why?_ Why _? Because when have we ever questioned the intelligence before? More than that, Rogers took the pictures_ himself _._

Again and again, around and around; the arguments never ceased. The conference room, large and wide and with enough seats to hold two dozen occupants, felt almost small for the sheer number of people it held. SHIELD, the Asgard Squad, the greater number of the NYPD officers who had been directly involved in the HYDRA case, and a handful of directors that Steve had rarely seen descend from their office thrones – all of them were seated, or standing, or leaning across the table. Almost all of them were talking, too, a mish-mash of confusion and outbursts and circles, circles, _circles_.

Steve hardly listened. He'd barely listened for nearly an hour when they'd first begun circling in their conversations. Instead, his eyes were fixed upon the tablet in his hand as he scrolled through the files depicted in minute print.

"What you're asking is for full-scale apprehension of potential criminals –"

"Yes."

"- an invasion of territory, the validity of its criminal nature what has only been hinted at by a single officer –"

" _Yes_."

"- and you want a number of attendants exceeding even that of the Red Room Operation? Fury, you can't be –"

" _Yes_. I _can_ and I _am_. Tell me, Director March, why it is so much less believable that Rogers would have valid intelligence on HYDRA than a mole who is self-assuredly a member of HYDRA himself?"

Steve flicked his finger and the page on the tablet scrolled upwards. Words leaped out at him, names – Doctor Zola, Karpov, Schmidt, Strucker – of which less than half were familiar only because he'd read them from the files in previous pages. Most of it was still in German, their translators knuckling through the pages that had been filched with tedious slowness, and Steve couldn't understand half of it.

But there was enough. Enough for him to know it was relevant. Enough to know that the information went above and beyond what he'd expected to find of HYDRA, the criminal drug syndicate based in NYC. From what he could see, what he could understand, most of HYDRA wasn't even based in New York at all.

"Alright. Alright, let's think this through."

"We've been thinking this through for two hours, Director. Any more thinking and you'll fry what brain cells you have left."

"A little respect, Fury, wouldn't go astray –"

"I'll offer respect to those who do the same to mine. Captain Rogers has a lead, and it's a damn good lead."

"Captain? Rogers is –"

"He got the evidence himself. Took the pictures. Infiltrated the base. What more could you ask for?"

Steve barely spared Fury an acknowledging glance. Despite his position as their manager, Fury didn't _have_ to stand by his team. He was SHIELD's director, which sat about a mile below those of the 'real' police, as had been the distinction between SHIELD and the rest of the NYPD for years. But standing up for his officers wasn't part of his job description – or at least not to such a degree. Not in the face of the Central directors when they huffed and fumed before his requests.

Steve held his tongue, staring intently at the tablet. His eyes locked on one word, a single word that he'd noticed recurringly but not enough to incite the interest of the rest of the force. Or not much, anyway.

 _Soldat_.

Bucky.

Steve didn't know why they called him soldier. He didn't even know what the words surrounding the pseudo-title meant, but it couldn't be good. So objectified, so disregarding, that the only name he was given was 'soldier'. Steve had wanted Bucky out of HYDRA for a long time, but that longing had redoubled since their infiltration two days before.

Two days. _Fuck_ , but the directors could drag things out. They didn't seem to understand time-sensitivity.

"If he infiltrated a HYDRA strongpoint, then what's to say that they don't already know he was there? What's to say they haven't abandoned it just as they have every other goddamn warehouse and base and – and _clubhouse_ they damn-well own."

"Well, we won't _damn-well_ know until we check, will we?"

"So go and check. You don't need an army, Fury –"

"I plan on wiping out HYDRA, Director Curosh, if it's all the same to you. And if the files we've retrieved and what we can make out of them are any indication, this is a pretty big head of our hydra we're lookin' at."

"Files? The files that were stolen from the location?"

"Apprehended, yes."

"You 'apprehended' files, and you honestly believe HYDRA doesn't know about it. Fury, I never believed you to be ignorant, but the digital fingerprints left all over –"

"Are non-existent, I can assure you, Director." That from Tony, who was a brave man to step into the throughs of argument. Steve had always known him to be brave, though that bravery was often mistaken – or accompanied by – pigheadedness. "Not my products. Fool proof, I guarantee."

"We're not asking for an infomercial, Stark."

"Good to hear. Can we get this show on the road, then?"

"And provide SHIELD with an army of officers? Officers that can't be spared from their responsibilities and duties?"

"Not even for a day?"

"Stark, sit down."

"Yes, ma'am."

Steve glanced towards Tony, who regarded the spread of directors at one end of the table with objectionably raised eyebrows. He glanced at the rest of his team, at Nat seated beside Clint and murmuring something that could only be heard as a buzz, at Sam shaking his head as he didn't quite glare at the directors himself. At every other officer, too, that muttered to themselves, to one another, and watching the Fury-director exchange like a tennis match spectator.

Only Vision seemed entirely oblivious, his attention trained upon his bulky laptop where he worked at decrypting and translating and dodging virtual booby traps as he'd been doing for hours. Steve had apologised for the workload, but Vision had only offered him a benevolent smile. "I enjoy the challenge, Steve," he'd said, before losing himself in the cybernetic world.

Steve drew his gaze towards the directors. Towards the suited men and women frowning in varying degrees of objection at the rest of the room and Fury in particular. He stared at them, none having seen a day in the field, in the lab or outside of their grand offices in years if ever, and he decided: he'd had enough.

"With all due respect, Directors," Steve said, speaking into the temporary lull that followed Tony's interruption, "the request for additional support was just that: a request. SHIELD will continue to initiate its operation regardless of the support of additional personal. I'm prepared to face the members of HYDRA in their own territory without such support if necessary, but if it pleases you, I would like to do so promptly. As you've already pointed out, they may not remain in such a location for much longer if they still remain at all."

The lull persisted after Steve's words, though for a decidedly different reason. Steve stared at the directors, but he heard a sound that was nearly a laugh from Tony. He felt Sam's hum of approval at his side and Nat's invisible smile. He thought he maybe even felt the similar support from the rest of his team, the slight nods of head and glances in his direction that were mimicked, at least in part, by the rest of the attendants in the room.

Fury hadn't even glanced in Steve's direction as he spoke, and he didn't when he'd finished. Leaning as he was upon the table, hands before him in a stoic clasp, he thudded the wood once briefly before nodding himself. "I believe Rogers has said it all," he said.

Then he pushed himself to his feet. "Directors. If you need me between now and the operation's initiation, you know where to find me."

It was their cue to leave. As one, Steve and the rest of SHIELD rose to their feet and followed their director from the room. There wasn't quite a communal strut to their step – or at least not from anyone but Tony – but Steve thought he felt it from them all nonetheless.

As soon as the door closed behind them, the room exploded in a riot of noise. None of them looked back even then, though Rhodie did murmur a mild, "Well, that was fun," as he strode at Fury's side towards their basement.

Fun? Steve wasn't sure he quite agreed, but at least they were finally doing something. Police-army or not, they were going to invade that base.

* * *

The abandoned parking lot looked different in the light of day. Granted, it was still abandoned, and the surrounding buildings just as much, but it looked different.

Almost as different as the entire labyrinth of the HYDRA base looked when flooded with snakes.

They didn't stand a chance. Not really. The snakes were unprepared, didn't expect an invasion, and didn't have their defences at the ready. Steve expected the guards. He'd expected them and he told Fury, SHIELD, and every other officer that joined them before entering. Though the night guards – or 'watchmen' as Bucky had called them – were scarce in number, there was still a possibility that those same watchmen would be far more multitudinous in the light of day.

There were doctors, or what appeared to be doctors. There were guards, or those that carried the arms and stance of those who would guard. There were assistants dressed in lab coats with wide eyes blown in horror as Steve and his fellow officers infiltrated through the hatch Bucky had shown him. More officers than Steve had expected, for that matter; apparently, the force wasn't quite as adhering to the sentiment of its directors in regard to SHIELD anymore. Steve would have cared more once upon a time. Once, months ago, before HYDRA and Bucky and everything else had become so much more important.

It wasn't really a fight. There were guards, but it wasn't _really_ a fight. Steve led his team through the darkness. They flooded into every room they came across at the touch of Steve's fingers to the digital lock pads. Firearms raised, voices hefted alongside them, doctors, guards, and assistants fell before their flooding force.

None stood a chance. There was no escaping them.

Up above the labyrinth, in another parking lot just as empty as the first that was nearly three blocks away from where the real entrance to the base lay, he stood and watched the proceedings. Arms folded, squinting slightly in the mid-morning sunlight, Steve watched as officers stood watch over the hordes of HYDRA members – the _dozens_ of them. He watched as those very members, cuffed and hunch-shouldered, were bowed into vehicles to be transported to holding. He watched as officers stood with their recording devices, their clipboards and papers and, for the more practical of the lot, their tablets and styluses, and recorded any word that slipped from a mouth of the apprehended.

He watched as Nat planted herself before the man he'd come to know in the last half an hour as Karpov and drilled him in rapid-fire Russian. It was with something very close to hatred that Steve regarded the man; unassuming as he was, with nothing outstanding about his features besides the thin pencil moustache on his upper lip, he wore objection and defiance in subtle tones that to Steve's trained eye bellowed like an outcry.

If anyone could get anything from him Nat could. She wasn't authorised for an on-the-scene interrogation, but what happened off the record stayed firmly planted their. Steve trusted Nat would get something from him. Anything.

Maybe not what _he_ would ask, though. Steve had questions for the doctors, for the members of HYDRA, just like the rest of SHIELD and the NYPD did. _Who do you work for? Who's your boss? Where is your nearest correspondent? How many workers are based at this particular location?_

There were questions to be asked about the drugs as well, questions that the Asgard Squad across the other side of the parking lot would be on like fire on oil: was this the only location of production – unlikely but necessary to ask; who is the supplier of the raw materials? Who produces and redesigns the synthetic brand of heroin that was made by HYDRA? Was HYDRA the only producer of that particular strain? And, most paramount, where was the doctor who stood behind the endeavour?

Steve knew Zola wasn't there. He'd asked and it infuriated him that he wasn't. The doctor – or whatever he was, for Bucky had seemed somewhat derisive of such a title – wasn't anywhere to be seen. Given that he was one of the few names prominent enough that even SHIELD had uncovered the scent of him, it was infuriating that he was nowhere to be found.

Frustrating. Even in success, even with the satisfaction of a plan gone right, SHIELD's operations were always frustrating.

Steve wasn't thinking about Zola, however. He wasn't even thinking all that much about their operation, their infiltration, and the hours of clean up and analysis and questioning that would be undertaken over the next hours, days, weeks. He almost, _almost_ disregarded the fierce triumph that thrummed through the apprehenders scattered across the parking lot for what would surely be a leap in their progression towards slicing HYDRA's many heads off once and for all. After the stagnation, the minimal successes over the past few weeks, it was sorely needed.

But Steve barely considered that. He stared at Karpov – Vasily Karpov, the files that Vision had decrypted named him – and his glaring wasn't solely for the brightness of the sun. It was because of what he'd read in the hours before their mission had initiated. What he'd learned of the man who was, even to the rest of SHIELD, considered a significant figure in HYDRA.

It was because of what he'd read pertaining to Bucky.

Bucky's name didn't appear in the files. There was no mention of James Barnes, nor any other derivative of his name, but he was there. He was there as simply 'the soldier', and each reference to him was so objectified, so emotionless and careless, that Steve had almost thrown his tablet with its electronic files across the room in a fit of rage.

He hadn't, and not only because Steve wasn't one for uncontrolled outbursts of violence. He hadn't because he'd wanted – _needed_ – to read the files instead.

The soldier was an asset. Seemingly spawned from nowhere, a soldier was what he was. Karpov had apparently been the one to initiate many of his orders, and the directions were recorded in almost offhanded print alongside similar recordings of operations.

_07-24: Process of bulk order, shipped to site Delta, required 07-25. Urgent payment, exchange denied without demands met (Zola, signed XXXX)._

_07-24: Second correspondence conducted between Hamilton and Ustine. Inconclusive findings. Hamilton required follow-up, potential for eradication should inconsistency between parties continue (Poliskey, signed XXXX)._

_07-25: Third denial of compliance by Jefferson. Final warning disclosed. Orders provided to the soldier for eradication of Jefferson and Co. (Karpov, signed XXXX)._

Eradication. The word seemed so blasé, so disregarding of the fact that it entailed the destruction of human life. If nothing else, such simple anecdotes would have made Steve hate Karpov simply on principle. But that was nothing on the rest of it.

_… how I find myself at a loose end with the majority of assets and as such have endeavoured to pursue the production of a more tailored candidate to process orders. The experiment conducted by Arnim Zola – the doctor expresses intentions of permanently joining the NYC development with his team of assistants the Monday following next – upon his specific subject is of potential significance. Subject appears malleable and ready to follow orders. Initiation for training has been discussed with the doctor and approved…_

That in Russian, as translated by Vision with the assistance of Nat. A nearly ten-year-old transcript that was buried in something like memorial records in Karpov's file. That, and –

_… no difficulties with the latest operation, proving once more the validity of my suggestion. The soldier successfully completed the set program of negligible targets in record time. Demonstration of further successes will result in primary use in future. The use of the soldier's skillset appears to be of significant benefit to the establishment. Specialised tests suggested by myself regarding the unnecessary eradication of Ophelia Eirhart and Co. were conducted swiftly and without protest, making the asset of particular benefit to…_

Steve hated reading the notes. They were buried so deeply with Bucky mentioned so briefly in passing that not a one of SHIELD had even mentioned him. Not yet, anyway. Steve hated it. He hated that Karpov appeared to be the one who had thrust Bucky into the role of killing. He hated that he was treated as merely an asset, as 'the solider'. Perhaps the worst of all, however, was how he corresponded with Zola.

Steve had never been so close to throwing his tablet as he had been reading the barest scrap of notes Karpov had included to the effect.

… _my most recent discussion with the doctor proves fruitful. The soldier was damaged nearly irreversibly and potential destruction was considered, but Dr Zola assures me that both the soldier and his limb will be in functioning order post-haste with replacement of the latter. The latest model for upper-left limb incorporates increased strength and sensitivity, with more complete involvement of the CNS to ensure maximum efficiency of movements. The doctor cautions that the process requires intrusive surgery the likes of which could result in significant neuronal degeneration of the spinal cord should surgery err. Approval has been granted to proceed with such surgery._

_The assignment itself was conducted to completion, however, resulting in the capacity for progression towards further overwhelming of the aversive Fraulty party and erasure of the primary contenders for…_

Vasily Karpov was a director. A coordinator. An instructor that ensured the proceedings of HYDRA were conducted to their fullest. He was, Steve had deduced, a significant figure in the New York City HYDRA threat, and to have him captured at all was a significant success on part of SHIELD and the force. He was Bad. He was Wrong. He'd ordered the deaths of countless people – or so the records represented – with little emotional investment and barely a word spared for the identity of those killed.

More than that, he was the one who ordered Bucky. Steve would hate him for that if nothing else. Perhaps even mostly for that. Yes, maybe mostly for that.

"You're glaring terribly hard."

Steve didn't glance towards Clint as he appeared at his side. It was indicative of how confidently the directors and operatives both believed their mission to have been completed that he was on the scene at all; Clint, unless directly called upon, was more likely a distant observer. It was what he was good at – just like he was good at observing his team members.

"Aren't I allowed to?" Steve said, and he felt his glare sharpen further as Nat clearly posed another question to Karpov's cuffed figure, to which he spat at her feet. He actually spat, and the curl of his lip that he turned upon Nat a moment later was full of disgust. "I think if anyone deserves to be glared at it's HYDRA."

"Mm," Clint hummed in agreement. "You'd be right on that one. I can't help but notice, though…"

Steve tried not to, but eventually he couldn't help but glance at Clint sidelong. The two of them were no closer nor more distant than anyone else in SHIELD, but Steve had always been more than aware of Clint's at times unnerving ability to simply see things he had no business seeing. "What?"

"It's nothing profound."

"Barton."

Clint's affable smile spread across his face. "We've switched from using first names now, have we?"

"Well, when I feel like I'm being played with, I find myself distinctly less fond of my colleagues," Steve said, regarding Clint pointedly.

Clint raised a hand. "It's nothing particularly bad, I swear. It just seems to me like you're less objectively hating HYDRA right now and more personally invested. This operation hit you hard, Cap?"

Steve pressed his lips together to stifle the urge to snap at Clint. He wasn't one to crack in anger. He wasn't one to lash out, either, or to act with fury – or at least he wasn't when outside an operation. Out in the field was a little different, but the need to rely upon instinct overwhelmed that to retrain himself. Sometimes lashing out was necessary when in a fight. Oftentimes, in fact.

Steve wasn't in a fight, but the instinct still rose within him. He smothered it with an iron fist. "I think the threat of HYDRA has become personal to all of us, wouldn't you agree, Clint?"

Clint cocked his head slightly, then glanced over his shoulder for a second, momentarily distracted by a sharp outcry of protest. The crier subsided into grumbles as the officer standing behind him folded him into the back seat of a police car. "You could say that," Clint murmured. "I guess it just seemed like something had changed a bit for you."

"Maybe it has," Steve found himself saying before his good sense bit back the words.

Clint turned back towards him, head tipping again slightly as he regarded Steve shrewdly. "Just out of curiosity, Steve – this intel."

Steve felt his jaw lock. "What about it?" he ground out. He truly wasn't in the mood to be drilled and questioned like one of the apprehended HYDRA members.

Clint shrugged. "Just wondering. Where did you meet this person? Are they something to you?" As Steve simply stared at him, his smile became knowing. "Let me guess. Classified?"

"You could say that."

"By circumstance, or by yourself?"

"That's classified too."

Clint's smile widened. "Alright, then. I'll hold my tongue."

"Please do," Steve said with a curt nod. "My correspondent would definitely be unhappy to hear that their name's been dropped, even in a roundabout manner."

Clint chuckled. "I'll bare that in mind." Then he was starting off across the lot towards Nat, weaving through the officers that scurried in their endless, slightly crazed dance. He did call over his shoulder as he went, however, the knowing hint returned to his expression. "Useful stuff they've given you, though. Might want to keep tabs on them, yeah? We could use someone like that in the near future, I think."

Steve stared after him, and all he could think was, _Use? I don't want to use Bucky. He's had enough of being used._ For Steve might not know everything, might know precious little, even, but that Bucky had been ordered through compulsion by Karpov, tied by his commitment to HYDRA as tightly as Steve was to SHIELD, he was growing more and more certain of.

Bucky might be far, far removed from the boy he'd been when Steve had first met him. So far as to be unrecognisable at times, even. But Steve didn't believe he was so far gone as to _want_ to kill. As to _revel_ in it. The Bucky that could feel so much for the death of his little friend Michael, who could hold Steve in a crushing embrace when he admitted his mom's death… it wasn't in him. Steve didn't believe Bucky could change that much. Even if he hadn't seen the evidence of otherwise, heard it in his voice as he spoke in that one and only instance of those he'd killed, Steve would have believed it.

Personal? Clint was exactly right. This was personal on a whole knew level to what Steve had experienced in the past. He'd thought it was personal _before_ , when his morals were on the line. But this… this was far closer to his heart.

The clean up would take hours. It would take days, even; possibly weeks. Retreating back to Central, into the SHIELD basement, Steve was bogged down by paperwork for the rest of the afternoon and well into the night. The high of that morning, of what they'd successfully managed, wasn't quite lost beneath the weight of reports, but it was a near thing. Not even the nods of approval from Steve's team could quite erase the disappointment of drudgery.

Fury's recognition came close, though.

"Cap," he called from across the basement, standing at the doors to the elevator where he was in the process of retreating for a follow-up meeting. Steve raised his head and drew his gaze towards him. He would never understand why Fury took to using the names Tony had allocated to everyone; he didn't seem the type, but then Fury had always been a mystery to Steve.

"Sir?"

Fury regarded him from his single eye, his frown split by the eye patch that crossed his face. He nodded his head slowly as though in agreement to his own thoughts. "Good effort today. We owe the success of this operation to you."

Steve was aware of the eyes of his team around him, approving or perhaps, in the case of Tony, smirking at the sheer awkwardness of Fury's unexpected compliment. Steve didn't glance towards any of them. "I can hardly take the credit, sir."

"Suck it up for once, Rogers," Fury said. "Doesn't this righteous act grow tired sometimes?"

"It can't grow tired if it's not an act," Rhodie said from behind Steve, his words surprisingly heartfelt. Tony snorted at his side.

Fury's regard shifted briefly to Rhodie before settling back on Steve. "Regardless, that's solid work, officer. Not every man can pull as much from a mole as that. Keep it up." Then he turned and strode into the elevator, the _ping_ of its closing a signal for his departure.

"That was so awkward," Sam said into the momentary silence that followed.

"Director Fury isn't incapable of handing out compliments, it would seem," Wanda said.

"Doesn't make it any less awkward."

Wanda shrugged before shifting her attention towards Steve. "He is right, though, Steve. Good job."

"I know I'm impressed," Clint said from his perch, regarding Steve with his slightly knowing smile. Nat nodded her agreement from where she leant on the edge of his desk.

"You managed all of that without telling me?" Sam said, leaning back in his seat. "Not that I can't appreciate a job well done, but aren't partners supposed to tell each other that kind of thing?"

"Sorry, Sam," Steve said, bowing his head a little. It was less in apology and more from a touch of guilt; Steve knew Sam was right as much as he knew that he wouldn't be telling him anything to the effect in future, either. Not concerning Bucky.

Sam shrugged. "I'm not complaining. I told you, I appreciate a job well done. It just surprised me that you managed without me noticing."

"I never saw you as the espionage type, Cap," Tony said, and as Steve glanced over his shoulder towards him, it was to see him not even sparing Steve a glance in return. His focus was entirely upon his computer, his fingers darting across the keyboard at an impressive speed. Sometimes, Tony was the hardest worker of them all. When he chose to be, that was.

"I'm not," Steve said.

"And yet you managed to coerce an insider into leaking you intel?" Tony shook his head before frowning at his computer screen and deliberately tapping in another command. "Or at least I'm assuming it was an insider. Is it?"

Steve didn't reply, turning back to his own work and the half page template of report he had yet to complete. Clint spoke for him. "It's classified, I believe."

"Classified?"

"Very."

"According to who? If Fury knew I'd –"

"According to Captain Rogers over there."

This time Steve could feel Tony's gaze rest upon him. He didn't glance up as he spoke. "Newbie, don't you know I know everything around here?"

"Mostly everything," Rhodie said.

"No, everything. I make it my job to know. Rogers. Hey, Rogers, you listening to me? I'll get it out of you yet."

"Yeah, I don't think so, Tony," Sam said, approval woven into amusement in his tone. "Good luck trying. Steve's as stubborn as a mule when he wants to be."

"You clearly haven't seen me at my best. I'm a master interrogator."

"Pipe down, would you, everyone?" Rhodie, ever the mediator, spoke over them. "If anyone has intentions of going home tonight, we need to knuckle down."

Tony still poked and prodded, Sam still deflected, and conversation was still exchanged, but knuckle down they did. Steve was left to wade through the piles of his work and keep his 'classified' intelligence just that.

Despite Rhodie's words, when ten o'clock drew near and Steve made to leave, it raised more than a few surprised eyebrows. Not because he was leaving –SHIELD had accepted that Steve did that, now – and not because no one else was either, because Bruce had already left, Wanda was halfway out the door, and Vision had retreated for the night into a cat-like curl at his desk; Rhodie had already draped him in his customary blanket. It was because, when situations arose in the past of such significance, Steve was rarely found to leave before the last of them if he left at all.

"It's not a bad thing," Sam said as he rose from his own seat, arms stretching overhead. "Just surprising."

"Are you alright, Steve?" Nat asked, a deeper question to her words that Steve chose to ignore.

"I'm fine," Steve said. "Just beat."

"'Just beat', he says," Tony echoed from his own seat. He'd pulled a significant weight that day and demonstrated to anyone who even had an inkling of suspicion that he was a loose end in SHIELD just why he wasn't. Tony was a paradox like that; at times he worked as hard as everyone else combined, as though to make up for his days where he did absolutely nothing. "You're beat? When has that ever stopped you, Rogers?"

Steve shrugged. He wasn't going to get into an argument with Tony. Not with anyone, for that matter. "It's been a long couple of days."

"Fair enough," Sam said. Wandering to Steve's side, he clapped a hand to his shoulder. "Did you actually get any sleep over the last few days?"

"Not really."

"Then let's head out. Leave the workload to Tony when he's on his caffeine high."

"I object to your suggestion, Wilson. I can work when not under the influence of caffeine."

"How many cups have you had today, Tony?"

"That's irrelevant."

"Not so irrelevant when you try to sleep, though," Rhodie said, taking a sip from his own mug that Steve _knew_ held a blast of his ridiculously strong brand of caffeine.

Tony brushed his words aside, still typing with his other hand as he did so. "Sleep is for the weak. Run along, weaklings. I'll pull your weight for you in your absence."

Shaking his head, Steve strode to the elevator with Sam at his side. He left, returning to his apartment, because he had to. Because even though the mission and SHIELD's workload was important, and despite the world of possibilities that had opened with each decryption Vision conducted, Steve had to return. To peer into the darkness of his bedroom. To wait on the off chance that Bucky might come.

Steve went home. Then he went to work. Then he returned home again and barely slept, despite Tony's prodding suggestions. For three whole days, Steve wound in a cycle of endless work and waiting. Three days he returned home and Bucky wasn't there.

Steve didn't let himself grow concerned. He couldn't, for otherwise he would tear himself apart in worry. Still, it was with a knee-knocking, almost overwhelming wave of relief that he returned home on the fourth day to find Bucky waiting for him.

He stood in the dark, as silent and watching and still as he always was. Steve felt him as soon as he glanced into the room, felt him as he always did, and it was with a slightly shaky exhalation that he paused in the doorway, closed his eyes briefly, before striding inside.

Steve had been scared.

He'd been scared of what could have happened in Bucky's absence. He'd been scared because there was surely no way that Bucky could have escaped without some sort of reprimand, not when he'd been recognised in the labyrinth of HYDRA's holdings. More than that, surely Steve had been seen with him. Had he been compromised because of it? What had happened? _Where had he been?_

Steve didn't ask. He didn't ask any of that as he crossed the room and, without pause, wrapped his arms around Bucky's waist. It was a sign of the times, of how they had both changed and regressed, that Bucky let it happen. Steve's embrace, his squeezing hold that almost convinced himself that he could hold on tight enough that Bucky would never get away, that he would never leave, that he would be _okay_ , was different from their impassioned holds. It was different from the heated touches, the lustful kisses, and the sometimes nearly aggressive tumble onto Steve's bed, clothing torn askew to bare any hint of skin to hungry fingers. In many ways, Steve was just as if not more satisfied with the simple touch. Just holding Bucky… just having him here…

"Are you alright?" Steve asked, his head bowed into Bucky's shoulder.

For a moment, Bucky didn't reply. His hands rested, barely touching, upon Steve's arms, more to simply hold that in any kind of demand. Steve could feel the soft warmth of his breath on his own shoulder and it was calming. Soothing. That Bucky held onto him in return, seeming to not only allow but to almost want the simple contact, was even more precious.

After a long pause, Bucky spoke. "Is that your opening question for the night?"

Steve turned his head slightly, if not enough to glance at Bucky's profile. "It's always going to be."

"You're a sap, Steve."

"I am. And?"

Bucky didn't let go of Steve. If anything, for a moment Steve thought he even held him back little tighter. "I'm alright," he said.

He wasn't. Something in his reply told Steve that he wasn't. Drawing away from Bucky's shoulder slightly, just enough to peer instead at his face, Steve knew it. For more than just the barest hint in his voice, it lay in the barest hint of a bruise that faded into the shadow of stubble upon his cheeks.

Steve bit back the urge to speak. He withheld the rush of feeling that welled within him for the sight of that bruise, the hatred for Karpov, and Zola, and anyone else who was involved. Steve smothered the questions that longed to spill forth and demand answers for _who_ and _why_ and _was it punishment_ or _for what reason_ exactly _so that I can know to avoid it in future_. Instead, he leant into Bucky and captured his lips in the familiar warmth of a kiss, deliberately ignoring what they couldn't discuss.

Bucky let him. Steve thought he might have even heard something that almost, _almost_ sounded like murmured gratitude voiced before they lost themselves in one another.

Thing were going to change. Steve could feel it. Just as they had with Loki, with his intelligence that provided an insight and a crack into HYDRA's impenetrable walls, things were going to change for SHIELD. But for Bucky, _with_ Bucky, Steve could hope that some things wouldn't. He hoped that, in this regard at least, it could stay just the same.

It was a feeble hope, Steve knew, flimsy even in the shrouds of his own mind, but he wished it anyway.

* * *

Things did change. Just as Steve had expected, they changed quickly, with rapidly evolving speed. That change was assisted in part by the intel gained from the infiltration and Vision's decryptions, partially because Loki humoured them and picked up his game, and partially because of Bucky.

Steve had never been more admiring of Vision. He'd known he was a master of programming, could infiltrate almost any system even more efficiently than Tony and his gadgets could, and was so deeply embedded in the computing world that he practically spoke like a machine most of the time. What Steve hadn't fully appreciated, however, was just how good Vision was.

It was expected that the files filched from the HYDRA base would be encrypted. It was expected that they might even wipe themselves clean if touched by unfamiliar fingers. It might even be expected that, for an organisation such as they, it would be impossible for SHIELD to break through their firewalls.

Not for Vision. Vision was a master of the technological world, and he proved just that mastery with his speed and proficiency of decryption. Central NYPD had a wealth of specialists on hand, but even they stepped aside to make way for Vision's superior skills.

He was the one who got the names. He was the one that hashed out a sketching of coordinates that SHIELD as a team poured over. Vision was the one who dressed down the complexities and, alongside Nat with her own particular skillset, picked apart the confusion of codes to reveal the knowledge beneath the surface.

It was a goldmine – of chemical combinations, a history of orders, and Karpov's records of enactments conducted. A goldmine for the police. What was more was that Steve knew it only scratched the surface of the intel HYDRA kept hidden in their closeted midst. It was a well of possibility that Steve felt himself thirst for like a dying man.

Loki's dangling titbits seemed to pick up pace just as Vision himself unearthed more and more. It was almost as though the faceless figure of their double agent felt the need to provide equal amounts of information that they managed to procure for themselves. Steve found himself growing more and more curious about Loki, and even more so for the pride that Thor spoke with whenever he relayed his latest leads.

"I told you he could be trusted," Thor said, his booming voice resounding throughout the conference room as though he wished everyone in Central to hear him. "Did I not tell you his words were valid?"

"Yeah, you did, Your Highness," Tony said with such blatant sarcasm that more than a few eyes rolled.

Thor didn't hear it. Or he pretended not to; Steve wasn't entirely sure which. "Perhaps you will be less inclined to disbelieve such leads in future?"

They were. SHIELD and the Asgard Squad and the NYPD officers that were growing more and more involved as necessity dictated _did_ heed Thor's and thus Loki's words. As understanding of just how deeply HYDRA's tentacles threaded through New York City's underbelly were unveiled, Loki's leads became that much more important.

Missions abounded. Steve saw more sites of clandestine chemistry, more tubs and vats, and was assaulted by the familiar, faint aroma of heroin than he'd ever wanted to see.

The paperwork piled up, an endless stack in hard and soft copy. The interrogators were constantly on their toes with battling the wills of the apprehended criminals. Every day in the office was manic – at times, Steve simply _had_ to extract himself for the briefest reprieve to let loose in the gym. It was the only way he could retain his sanity.

Steve had always preferred fieldwork to desk work, and despite the latter swamping him in a never-ending stream, everything changed after Karpov and his team were apprehended. Everything. Steve felt as though he was stretching his wings, that he was actually doing something, that they were _getting_ somewhere.

Steve didn't want to hurt people; he wanted to protect them. If it came to contained violence against those who were in turn hurting others, he wouldn't hold himself back from the necessity of attack, or threatening with force. There was something fiercely satisfying about working the muscles he trained every day in doing what was Right. What Steve _knew_ was Right, what he felt in his bones, even as he fought against those who professed their innocence with lying tongues and preached that "I had no idea that was what I was being ordered to do, I swear!"

It was an exhausting time. Exhilarating with success, but exhausting. Days stacked atop one another, with the threat of danger from potential fights that always accompanied fieldwork pitted against the tantalising offer of success. There was still so far to go, still so many to apprehend, and with each base uncovered, each pit of snakes bared to the light, that reality was made only more apparent. None were quite so revealing as the first Bucky had shown Steve, none quite so beneficial in the information and facts they scrounged from Karpov's computer, but it was something. They were getting somewhere.

What really made the difference, however, was Bucky. Not overtly, and not to anyone else's eyes, but Steve knew. What Bucky offered wasn't in the leads he dropped like those that slipped from Loki's teasing tongue, or in blatant discoveries of intelligence that would patch the gaps in SHIELD's knowledge. Instead, he worked the flip side. What he offered – Steve knew it wasn't for SHIELD's benefit. Bucky offered for Steve himself.

It began barely two weeks after the Ground Base One operation. The operation was so named only in later weeks, when it was discovered that HYDRA quite literally dwelled underground in a number of their pits. Since the operation, since Bucky had been absent for nearly half a week, he'd made a point of visiting Steve's apartment almost every night. He never said he did, never mentioned that he came more often for a particular reason, but Steve knew. Like so many things that Steve hadn't even noticed but somehow simply seemed to arise, he just _knew_.

Like the fact that, after those two weeks, he knew Bucky was agitated.

It wouldn't have required one who knew Bucky well to realise, Steve acknowledged. In the darkness of night, from where he sat on the end of his bed in nothing but jeans and watched Bucky, he could see that much. Bucky was… Agitated didn't even begin to cover it.

The play of hallway light made Bucky's bare skin paler than it was, darkening his hair to black and his eyes just as much. His head was bowed as he stepped four slow steps towards the window, then turned and walked another four back towards the doorway.

At any other time, Steve might have simply hung suspended in the opportunity to watch him, to admire the very sight of him; Steve had seen more than his fair share of impressively built bodies, had sparred with more than a few in SHIELD and otherwise, but Bucky was different. The spread of muscles across his back drew Steve's eyes and held them, the tapering of his waist, the curve of his arms as he reached his real hand up and grazed a hand distractedly through his hair. Bucky had changed from how he'd been as a boy and a teenager. Of course he had, but that reality was made no less astounding, no less captivating, than it was when Steve watched him. He was bigger, more noticeable, simply _more_. That change was made no less so for Steve's own growth.

"Bucky," Steve said quietly, long yet all too short minutes after he'd settled taken to staring at him. Steve _wanted_ to simply stare, but something was clearly amiss. "Tell me what's wrong."

Steve wouldn't ask it as a question. Oftentimes, he was beginning to understand, it was easier to drawn an explanation from Bucky without asking at all. Sometimes, as he never would have months before when they'd first met, Bucky would just tell him.

That night was not one of those nights.

Bucky paused in step. He didn't quite glance towards Steve, keeping his head bowed and turned away in the manner that Steve had noticed he adopted often of late. It was for HYDRA-related instances that he did so, he'd realised. For times when he was torn between his bone-deep commitment to HYDRA, to what he owed them, and Steve.

Because Bucky cared about Steve. That understanding was one that Steve had always known, even if he'd forgotten or believed otherwise in Bucky's absence. Now, though, it was something more. It was something greater. Bucky cared about him and it was splitting him in two. Steve felt as torn on the matter as Bucky seemed; he shouldn't be heartened that Bucky would stand by him, but he was. Just as he was heartbroken that it had to happen at all.

After a moment of standing still, frozen and staring at the ground with hand still raised to the side of his head, Bucky spoke. "That's not a question, Steve."

"No. It's not."

"It would make things easier if it was."

 _I know it would,_ Steve thought, and it saddened him to realise. How much he longed for the easy exchanges of a long-ago past. Oftentimes Steve didn't think it would ever return. "If we keep this up at the rate we are, I'll end up doubling my tally."

Bucky exhaled in a huff of what wasn't quite a laugh. "Well, you've already done that enough times."

"Remember when we were kids and it was always you who asked _me_ the questions?" Steve said. "I could hardly get you to stop to get my own say in sometimes. Surely all those times count for something."

Bucky flicked him a sidelong stare. Brief. Somehow a little saddened. "I remember," was all he said.

Steve sighed. Reaching a hand across the distance between them, he took a hold of Bucky's metal wrist and tugged slightly, gently, towards himself. Bucky resisted his coaxing for barely a moment before allowing himself to be drawn. Their knees bumped together and the contact was somehow reassuring.

"Tell me, Bucky," Steve murmured, raising his other hand to grasp Bucky's raised arm, if only to hold it just as he did his other wrist. "Please."

Bucky shook his head just slightly. "Don't do the puppy dog face thing, Stevie."

"Do the what?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

Steve did. The thing was that he did. He bit back the urge to smile, if a little sadly, and shrugged. "I'll use any ammunition in my arsenal."

Bucky huffed in that not-quite laugh again. "Brutal."

"Maybe."

Another pause and then Bucky sighed. He leant forwards slightly, enough that his forehead actually dropped to rest against Steve's. Once upon a time, such a gesture wouldn't have seemed possible. Once, any kind of contact that wasn't heated and lustful would have been awkward and resistant. But not now. Now it felt just… Right.

 _How could anyone believe him to be just an object_? Steve thought. _Just a soldier? Just a murderer? Not him. Never him_.

If only such an argument could be used in Bucky's defence. Steve thought that, somehow, his testimony wouldn't stand up to the mark.

The feel of Bucky's breath upon Steve's lips stuttered slightly before he spoke. _Definitely not just a murderer_. "You're going down south tomorrow," he said quietly.

Steve blinked up at his, his distraction abruptly ceased. "What?"

Bucky's eyes, so close to Steve's own, were closed. "You are. Down Staten Island way, on the edge of the bay. You've found Keller's hideout."

Steve swallowed. Isla Keller was just one more addition to the rapidly growing list of known HYDRA representatives. She was a big one, too. "How do you know that?"

Bucky didn't reply. Not to that, at least. His head shifted slightly against Steve's as he blinked his eyes open. His eyelashes grazed briefly against Steve's cheeks. "They know. They know you've got plans to head down there."

"They're clearing out? They already have?"

"No." Bucky shook his head. "Not that. Not yet. They're waiting for you."

Steve felt a cold chill straighten his spine. He'd expected it. Really, he had. After that first time months ago when he'd been briefly threatened at gunpoint, he'd come to expect the turnabout of retaliation rather than just flight. There were only so many times a snake could be struck before it decided to spit back. Steve had expected it, but he didn't like it.

Still, he didn't question Bucky's words. He wouldn't, because Bucky hadn't led him astray yet. He wouldn't – because he cared. "We shouldn't go."

"No. You shouldn't."

"Our mole didn't tell us."

"Your mole probably doesn't know."

"But you do."

Bucky paused. Steve saw a muscle tick just slightly in his cheek. Then he nodded curtly. "I do."

The spread of possibilities, of what that simple confession meant, opened up before Steve, but almost at the same moment he heard Clint's words ring in his mind. _Use him._ Steve wouldn't do that. Instead, he nodded himself and slipped his arms around Bucky to hold him instead. Bucky let him.

"Alright. I get it."

"You won't go. You won't be that stupid."

"We won't be stupid."

Steve shouldn't have been as surprised as he was that Fury immediately agreed with his suggestion. After Steve explained, after he told SHIELD in a briefing the next morning while pointedly avoiding making direct eye-contact with everyone – with Nat, mostly – they agreed. Apparently, the fact that Steve's inside man had led them straight before meant something.

"It couldn't have been so easy as all that," Fury said from the doorway of his partition wall. "We're not stupid enough to think that it would be that easy every time." Then he nodded his head with immediate decisiveness. "Alright, then. Change of plans, Princesses. Cap, keep up your feed. Let us know if anything else arises."

It didn't mean that they didn't make the trip to Staten Island. Not immediately, that was, because they did go eventually. It was simply that, with Bucky's additional supply of knowledge, they approached it from a different angle. With more back up. With more delay.

Smarter. And they won.

It became almost routine between Steve and Bucky after that. Steve grew attuned to the times Bucky would itch to tell him without telling that something was wrong, that HYDRA knew about their plans, and he would ask without asking.

"They've cleared the place. Don't bother."

"Don't make the mistake of heading over to Marton Lot. I trust you'd like to keep your casualties to none? Don't fucking go, Steve."

"They're bringing in the armament. You might want to wear an extra vest and actually use that pistol of yours you wave around all over the place."

The mood grew sombre whenever they conversed, but never more so when Bucky told him not to return home the next night. It was a message he sent almost wordlessly to each and every one of the members of SHIELD through Steve, and through Steve regretted the necessity, he obliged.

A sleepover at work? It would have sounded far more fun if Steve hadn't slept there countless times before. Even more fun if it wasn't for the purpose of keeping everyone alive. If the mood was sombre between Steve and Bucky when they conversed, it was doubly so in the basement that night.

Steve was happy to leave. Maybe it was foolish of him to return to his apartment, but he couldn't stay away. Not with the potential for Bucky visiting and him not being there.

Steve returned to his home after four days at the basement – four long, long days, in which Vision had retreated into an unspeaking cocoon, Bruce and Tony had nearly come to blows, Nat regarded everyone with cool disapproval for their discord, and Rhodie looked ready to pluck his eyes out for how often he'd scrubbed his hands across his face in exasperation. Steve wasn't the only one happy to leave; even Sam admitted that he "Wouldn't mind not seeing yours or anyone else's face for a couple of hours, Steve."

Bucky was there when he returned. Of course he was, because something in Steve told him that he would be.

"You're an idiot for coming back. They're looking to take out a lesson on the lot of you."

"Then I guess you'll just have to keep us posted," Steve said. Bucky hummed his disapproval, but he didn't seem disinclined to return the kiss Steve hungrily drew him into. He didn't think it was his imagination that Bucky seemed just as starved.

There was danger. There was threat. There was success and the ever-present frustration, but more than that, for the first time, even more so than had been earlier that year and at the tail end of the previous one, Steve felt like they were _doing_ something. And it felt _good._ On an instinctive level, as so much of fieldwork was, Steve felt them getting closer. To what, he couldn't be sure.

Vasily Karpov was apprehended. He was facing his trial.

Stigan Mastiff had admitted to his crimes with more ease than Steve could have hoped for.

Isla Keller was putting up a fight, but her primary interrogator would crack her eventually, Steve knew. She _would_ crack.

One after the other, the number of apprehended grew. The whispers diminished or changed their words. SHIELD were getting somewhere. Between Vision's decryption, Loki's persistence, and Bucky's backhanded cautioning, they were actually pinning HYDRA against the wall. Slowly, surely, yet somehow also with incredible speed.

Of course it wouldn't remain at such an unstable medium for so long. It couldn't, and Steve should have guessed the balance would be tipped when they tracked Zola.

He and Bucky were sitting on the floor, just the two of them. Bucky had his back against the wall, legs stretched before him and one ankle hooked beneath Steve's knee while the other leg rested atop Steve's thigh. Steve sat across from him, leaning against the end of his bed and head rocked backwards. The simple contact, the weight of Bucky's leg against his own, was a casual comfort that bolstered him for the words he knew he had to say.

"Bucky," he began, and even that single word sounded strained to his ears. He didn't need to glance in Bucky's direction to know that he held his attention.

Steve drew a breath, closed his eyes briefly, then rocked his head forwards. Bucky met him stare for stare, his own head resting against the wall behind him. He raised an eyebrow, a question the likes of which he rarely took the liberty of asking.

"We know where he is," Steve said.

Bucky blinked. He frowned slightly, almost confusedly. Then understanding dawned. "Ah."

"Yeah," Steve said, ignoring the tightness in his throat. He shouldn't be telling Bucky, shouldn't be giving him a heads up, but he had to. He had to, because… "You guard him, don't you?"

Bucky didn't even attempt to feign ignorance. He nodded.

"Always?" Steve asked a little desperately.

"Is that a -?"

"It's a question."

Bucky pursed his lips slightly. "Most of the time. Especially recently. When I'm not on a hit or… elsewhere. Yes."

 _Elsewhere_. With Steve? When he came to his apartment almost every night? Steve focused on that vagueness rather than the mention of the hits and the potential for supportive guardsman work that he'd come to understand the _soldat_ – the _soldier_ – possessed as a duty.

Steve drew a slightly shaky breath before edging forwards slightly, scooting across the distance between them. Closer. It was enough just to be a little closer. "You need to get away from him, Bucky. Just while we're there."

"I can't do that, Steve."

"Just for –"

"Steve. I can't _do_ that."

Steve reached a hand to grasp Bucky's just because he could. Because he had to. "I know your dedication. I can't blame you for that," _even if I wish it was otherwise_ , "but just for once, Bucky. Just this once. I can't see you caught."

It was Bucky's turn to lean into Steve, and there was something very nearly soft in his expression. It could have been a trick of the light, could have simply been a projection of what Steve wanted to see, but he didn't think so. "Don't go on the operation, Steve," Bucky said in barely a whisper.

Steve stared at him. "Bucky, I –"

"Don't go. If you don't want to see it, then don't look."

Steve's hand tightened on Bucky's fingers even as he felt Bucky's squeeze his own. God, but he didn't want to see Bucky caught. He didn't want to see Bucky apprehended, to be labelled the murderer that he _was_ but also _wasn't._ But by the same token, Steve couldn't stay away when he knew what was happening. When he knew there was a possibility for Bucky to be caught, or worse, caught in the crossfire doing what he was ordered to do. The thought was intolerable.

"I can't do that," Steve said, and heard the hypocrisy of his own words. So much for Right and Wrong. Steve thought he didn't know all that much of such things at all anymore.

Bucky raised his free hand to Steve's chin, metal fingers that were so sensitive, so gentle, so dextrous as to be almost supernatural in make, tipping his head just slightly. Steve hated that arm and all it stood for as much as he loved it because it was Bucky's. "I know, Stevie. I know you can't." Then he leaned forwards and pressed a brief kiss to Steve's lips, to his cheek, to his lips again. Steve let him.

 _That_ was Wrong. If Steve knew nothing else of what was Right, he would understand that such a thing was utterly Wrong. It would never be fair that Bucky was involved, even if he did think himself Bad, that he'd walked into it, that he owed HYDRA something. That Bucky might be caught and deemed a criminal with the rest of the apprehended HYDRA members was a Wrong so horrendous it sickened Steve.

But it could happen. It could, because SHIELD was going after HYDRA and Zola, and Bucky could be there. Steve just had to make it his priority to stop what shouldn't be allowed to happen.

* * *

_"I've got my eyes on the door. No movement."_

_"Hold fast. We move on my mark."_

_"Whenever you're ready."_

_"I said hold."_

_"That might not be an option."_

_"Alri – alright! Fuck it, just go!"_

Steve barely heard the words. He barely heard the order before necessity, his field officer instinct, kicked in and he was running. Sprinting, Glock in hand, eyes trained upon the four tiered building that stood before him.

A warehouse. Why was it always a warehouse? Steve didn't know. He didn't care, and it wasn't of consequence. That it was Zola's newest retreat, another pit of snakes that stretched below ground nearly as extensively as Ground Base One, if Loki was to be believed. The site itself was sparse, unremarkable, lined by identical warehouses conspicuously empty for their size. How, in the whole of New York City, had they not been noticed?

Steve wasn't sure. He didn't rightly care. He had his weapon raised, his gaze trained, attention focused. The heavy steel doors might have been locked – Steve wasn't sure – but it didn't matter as he ploughed into them. It didn't matter as he charged inside to the sound of his team, of the Asgard Squad, of an army of general officers, on his heels. At his sides. Around the other side of the building. They had the snake pit cornered.

It erupted in a flurry. Plans were followed but were just as often disregarded as circumstances dictated. The warehouse wasn't empty, even if the front room was. Like a spreading river bursting through a punctured dam, the NYPD and its special forces invaded.

Teams split. Squads descended through the distant doors, disappearing beyond – to stairwells, to hatches that led underground, to chase what sounded like the snakes themselves, the doctors and assistants and guards and operators. Steve saw them leave. He heard them go, heard their echoing shouts of "On the ground!" and "Hands in the air!" that bellowed out as much as they resounded through his earpiece.

For any faults of the force that had once shunned SHIELD, Steve knew they had it handled.

He saw Thor lead Volstagg through one door, Sif with Fandral and Hogen through another. They sought the vats and chemical storage rooms like hounds on a scent. He saw Tony and Rhodie lead a charge in the opposite direction, heard Rhodie's cry to attention, and knew they headed underground.

Steve didn't follow. Steve looked to the nearest upward stairwell. Steve took the stairs two at a time, Sam on his heels, the footsteps of their back-up chasing his tail. Somewhere, Steve knew, Nat was demolishing her own opponents – likely not too far away, for they three were _always_ close.

They'd expected a fight. It was half the reason they held their pistols aloft at all. Steve had expected it, and that was exactly what he got. Almost before he'd entered the hall on the second floor – high ceiling, work benches spread with mechanics half draped in sheets, figures dotted throughout – the first shot sounded. It didn't come from him.

Then everything exploded in manic violence.

To say it was a brawl would be an over-estimation. SHIELD did not _brawl_. And yet a fight it was. Steve didn't shoot unless he had to – he didn't _want_ to – but within seconds of leaping into the fray, he thought he might. He might just have to.

A figure charged out of nowhere, ploughing into him. Steve wrestled his attacker to the ground, pistol-whipped him when he tried to rise, and dropped to the ground himself when a shot resounded overhead. Another figure sprung upon him, and he dodged, drove a shoulder into their gut, slammed them on their backs. A twist, a duck, springing away from another shot that sounded. Then a brief pause and, in a burst of sharp-eyed attentiveness, Steve cast an assessment of the room.

Cluttered. Furniture, tables, chairs of impediment. Figures – four, eight, seventeen in total. At least half of them appeared to be guards, bodyguards or 'watchmen' or whatever they were, and those that didn't hold firearms joined the fight anyway. Steve had learned this; HYDRA seemed to attract a particular type of person – that was, those who didn't care if they got their hands dirty. For all the preaching in the aftermath that "I didn't know" and "It's just a job, just a job!" they fought back. Too many of them fought back.

Another shot fired. Steve spun to his feet as his team flooded throughout the room. Pistol raised, pointed, he bellowed the same words as the rest of the officers.

"Hands up, put your hands up!"

"On your knees!"

"Drop your weapons!"

Suffice it to say, no command slowed the violent response. It was as though they didn't hear them at all.

Steve fell to the fight. He didn't _want_ to fight; he'd practiced too much, dedicated too much time to it, to consider they would overwhelm HYDRA without, but he didn't like it. Sam always said Steve was _good_ at fighting but still – he didn't like it.

But he did it.

When the guards-watchmen-attackers leaped to the assault, Steve fought back. Blocks rose, punches flew in retaliation. A warning to "Stop, down, drop your weapons!" only incited further attack, induced the urge to abuse the moment of instruction. As soon as Steve opened his mouth, he could see his allowance was going to be taken advantage of.

A man with a blank stare. A woman who twisted far too nimbly. Another that wore goggles across her face fired a shot – actually fired – and Steve only had a moment to thrust the officer to his right out of the way before he was dropping to the ground himself. Alone or in pairs, with Sam at his back then away, Steve fought and threatened, ordered and all but pleaded, because that was the _right thing to do_.

HYDRA just didn't know it. They writhed and resisted as though their freedom depended on it – which it very well did for those so clearly guilty.

It was strange how, in the midst of a fight, time skewed. How one instant the world could be a dizzying mess of well-honed reflexes and stinging knuckles, and the next it could snap into sharp relief. As Steve danced back from a baton-wielding assailant, felled him to the ground and managed to snap him in zip ties, he saw him. He saw Bucky in that moment of focus, and the detached numbness, the sobriety of the fight, shattered.

Bucky shouldn't be here. Bucky shouldn't be fighting. And yet…

And yet. Steve was there to see it. He'd known it was going to happen, and then it did. Of course it did.

He was across the length of the room. From the flurry of activity, of punches and brutal strikes of his metal hand that, even gloved as it was, Steve could identify it for the ferocity it smacked his fellow officers to the ground. Bucky was a whirlwind of attack-defence-kick-punch-block and then there were the knives. How could Steve have forgotten the knives?

Everything was happening at once. Too fast, and yet too slow. Steve pushed himself from his knees, away from the felled snake panting at his feet, and lurched across the room. He saw Bucky. He saw a huddled figure just behind him – white lab coat, bowed head, half hidden beneath a table. He saw Officer Carson sent flying by a kick and he saw Bucky. He saw an assailant appear in front of him, felled him, and abandoned the need to lock him down, and then Bucky again. He saw the huddled figure that could only be the doctor retreat – saw Bucky – saw the doctor cower once more as a shot resounded off the walls alongside a cry that was more surprise than pain. He saw… he saw…

Steve saw Bucky. He saw him fell officers like wheat stalks before a scythe, deadly and dangerous. He saw Bucky and - and he saw when Sam raised his pistol and took aim.

Steve didn't think. For once, he didn't consider right and wrong. He didn't think of blacks or whites or greys, of consequences and reprimands. Of what it could mean for SHIELD because the cowering doctor making for the stairwell _had_ to be Zola and he couldn't be allowed to get away.

There was no thought to the action. Steve bellowed instinctively. "Sam, get down!"

Sam was a good partner. A great partner. He responded to Steve's warning in an instant and, without the click of a trigger, fell to the hard second-storey floor of the warehouse. Steve ducked an attack from a bodyguard that leaped at him, cracked the man with an elbow upside their chin, and he spun towards Bucky once more.

He saw him. He saw him see Sam, see Steve. He saw the split second of hesitation, of something that could almost have been regret in one who dared to show expression. Then Bucky was turning – knocking Officer Wales to the ground as he did – and grabbing Zola to drag him up the stairwell. They disappeared in a second.

Steve couldn't let them get away. Not Zola and not… not Bucky. He couldn't let anyone else chase them either, because right or wrong, Steve couldn't let Bucky be locked up. He wouldn't. Couldn't.

As the snap of someone – was that Nat? – barked an order of, "Two hostiles escaping, making for the third floor," Steve replied with an equally curt, "I've got them."

And he did. He had them. Would have them. Diving through the fight – how was it still a fight? How were they _still fighting_? – and stepping over the downed apprehended, the officers that pinned them to the ground at their sides, he dodged any stumbling figure that appeared in his path, ignored a shot fired, and started up the stairs.

Why Steve took his microphone off his collar he couldn't say. Or he could, but he didn't want to admit it. Hypocrite that he knew he was becoming, Steve wouldn't admit it to anyone who asked, but he knew. He knew he would speak to Bucky, and he knew that he could let no one hear him. He knew it as soon as he lurched through the doorway at the top stairwell and burst into the room beyond.

He knew it as soon as his mouth opened and the command, the plea, tore forth. "Stop!"

Bucky was across the room. A wide room, less cluttered than the one below, with tables draped in more sheets. Bucky and the doctor were halfway to a window, Zola whimpering and stuttering something that could have been French or German or English, but Steve didn't care to listen. Bucky clearly didn't either. His hand grasped Zola's collar and he didn't spare him a hint of notice as he strode towards the only exit left in the room.

He did pause, however, when Steve spoke. He shouldn't have done that.

"… cannot be done, _soldat_ , it cannot. I _will not_ be leaping through a window, and you _will_ take me –"

"Shut the hell up," Bucky snapped at Zola's squawking demands. He didn't glance at him even for that. Instead, he stared at Steve across the distance between them with such blank-faced expressionlessness that it had to be feigned. It had to be a mask. Steve could tell now. Maybe he'd always been able to tell.

Zola wore a strange combination of terror and glaring anger as he struggled to twist and peer up at Bucky. He was a small man, balding, round spectacles askew atop his short nose. It was an almost disappointing sight after so much chasing, so much pinning the blame; Zola should be larger than life but instead he was… this. Simply a man.

A man who ordered Bucky like a _thing_ rather than the person he was.

"Bucky, please," Steve said, stepping slowly into the room. The sounds of shouts, objections and distress and demands, echoed from the floor below. "I know you won't let yourself, but I'm begging you. Just give him up and –"

"Bucky?" Zola snapped, swinging his gaze to Steve. His glare was somewhat less impressive than he'd likely intended given that his feet weren't quite touching the ground. "Who the hell is -?"

"I can't do that. He's my…" Bucky spared Zola a glance, and if venom could possibly pervade utter blankness it did for the briefest of moments. "My mission."

" _Soldat_ , what are you -?" Zola spluttered, an understandable response to the visible tightening of Bucky's gloved fingers in his collar. "Get me – _hol mich hier raus!_ "

Steve ignored him. He couldn't look away from Bucky _._ Even as a hitman, as a bodyguard of a HYDRA doctor, biochemist and illegal drug producer, he was Bucky. A small, irrational part of Steve could only stare in adoration, because standing alongside the window was the first time Steve had truly seen him in the light in months. He looked far more like the boy he'd been in that light, even with the weight of what his was starkly visible alongside it. Steve ached just a little.

But he raised his pistol. "I'm not going to hurt you. Either of you. But you need to get on your knees." It hurt to say, because Steve knew he wouldn't apprehend Bucky. It was all empty words. Zola, however… "Bucky, you leave. Go now, and I'll –"

"Do you not hear me, _soldat?_ " Zola demanded. He sounded more hysterical than demanding, wriggling in Bucky's grasp. "We're going – take me – just _vernichte ihn!_ "

"I can't do that," Bucky said and Steve didn't know if he was talking to himself or Zola. Maybe both. What had Zola said? Something about… had he told Bucky to kill him? "Policemen should stick to desk duties. You should have stayed at the office, Steve."

Zola was flushed, cheeks reddening, though from breathlessness or objection Steve wasn't sure. He took another step forwards, his Glock raised, and it was likely that his hands knew he wouldn't fire, for he couldn't even urge them onto the trigger. "Bucky –"

Too many things happened at once, then. As often happened in fights, one second of clarity snapped into a dozen of confusion. Zola moved. He twitched and Bucky moved too, as if in response. Steve flinched mid-step across the room and Zola extracted a gun. A pistol. Tiny and black, a Baikal, make unknown – Steve registered it in a split second.

Zola swung his arm wildly –

Bucky jerked the man at the collar, took a step towards the window, produced a combat knife from nowhere –

Steve trained his Glock on Zola –

A shot sounded.

The room froze again in a heartbeat.

Steve didn't even know where the shot had come from. It was too close to his ear, too proximate to locate immediately. In front, behind, from his own hands – until the ringing lessened and it registered. Behind. Definitely behind. Steve was glancing sharply, briefly, over his shoulder as Zola uttered a delayed cry of – objection? Surprise? The beginnings of pain?

Nat stood in the doorway, feet planted and as deadly as her Black Widow namesake. Her own Glock was raised, her expression as flat as Bucky could manage, and her focus was trained on Zola. Or it was for a second before it switched. Not to Steve, she didn't even seem to see Steve, but to –

" _Don't_."

Steve was stepping into her path without thought, because she couldn't shoot Bucky. Steve couldn't let that happen, not when he was watching and not when he wasn't. That understanding went above and beyond simple right and wrong, because right and wrong could never be something so encompassing, so complex and _desperate._

Steve spread his arms, ignoring Zola's groan behind him, ignoring the shuffle that would be Bucky's step. In retreat? Into an attacking stance? He didn't know. He didn't care if Bucky was escaping or about to attack him from behind. All that mattered was that Steve stood between Nat and the focus of her pistol.

Nat's eyes flickered. Darkening, as flat as her expression, they flickered towards Steve and a touch of humanity returned to them. Nat was a terrifying person, and even diminutive in stature as she was, Steve was eternally grateful she'd decided he was worth her good regard.

Now, though? After that day, he wasn't sure he still held it.

Nat was smart. The smartest in SHIELD, Steve had always thought. She absorbed the situation in a second, and though she didn't fully lower her pistol, her fingers clasped with a decidedly less threatening grasp. More than that, though, one rose to her microphone and muffled it beneath a glove.

Steve would go against protocol. He hadn't realised until that day that he would do such so instinctively, but he would. He had. He certainly hadn't expected Nat to do the same with such promptness, however, but she did. She didn't even hesitate.

"Rogers," she said shortly. "What's going on?"

They didn't have time for a lengthy discussion. Zola was babbling across the room in rapid French or German or perhaps Swiss; it was hard to tell for his hysterical tone. But more than that, Bucky held a knife. A knife that he could very easily send fling towards Nat, Steve knew.

Nat or Bucky. Bucky or Nat. It didn't really even matter for whose protection he stood between them. Steve planted himself and he wasn't moving.

"I can't let you do this," he said.

"This?" Nat echoed.

"You can't take him."

Nat's eyes flickered over Steve's shoulder. In the briefest second of that glance, Steve heard only his heartbeat thundering in his ears, drowning out even Zola's whimpering. Fuck, Nat really had actually shot the man. Steve almost hadn't expected it of her, but when he truly considered it, if anyone would do what needed to be done it was she.

"Zola needs to be –"

"I'm not talking about Zola," Steve interrupted. His heartbeat thundered even louder, and he was almost surprised that he could hear Nat's words at all. Concern, unshakeable fear that someone, one of them, would end up shot or knifed and on the floor, was unbearable. Not Bucky. Not Nat. "I don't care about Zola," he said, because he didn't. Not really. Not compared to Bucky and Nat.

Nat's gaze flickered again. The hand holding her pistol readjusted slightly. "Rogers, I have to –"

"Don't," Steve said desperately, hands rising higher in placation. "Nat, you can't –"

"Rogers, we're on a mission and HYDRA needs to be apprehended –"

"You can't –"

"Steve, he's a –"

"Nat, please, you can't –"

" _Soldat! Was machst du gerade?_ "

Steve didn't know what Zola barked, couldn't translate it for himself, but he could guess. As he jerked his gaze over his shoulder, his eyes fell upon Zola but were immediately drawn to Bucky. To the window, barely a step behind them. To where Zola clutched at his shoulder, a wide blossom of red staining his white coat. Bucky was staring past him to Nat, combat knife still in hand, his other still holding Zola's collar as though he'd forgotten he was even there.

They still waited. Why did Bucky still wait?

A sound echoed from the stairwell. A cry, a shout, an order, and Steve didn't think it was his imagination that it seemed closer. That _they_ were coming closer _._ Breath hitching, he spared a glance to Nat, to the stairwell and the officers that would follow, then back to Bucky.

"Please," Steve said, and he didn't even care in that moment that Nat or Zola would hear. "You have to leave."

There was a war going on. Beneath the blankness of Bucky's expression, Steve could see it. How had he ever thought he was expressionless, even for a second? Bucky flickered a glance down to Zola, then to Steve, then distinctly to Nat. His lips parted just slightly before –

" _Go_ ," Steve ordered.

Bucky went.

Zola dropped to the ground with a grunt as Bucky's hand released him. He'd barely crumpled to his knees before Bucky, so fast, impossibly fast, spun and leaped towards the window. Steve had known it was going to happen – there was no other way out after all – but he still raised a hand. He still uttered a wordless cry of fear.

Then the glass shattered. Bucky disappeared in a burst of diamond-like shards. Silence tore almost viciously through the room, punctured by the sound of approaching officers as they climbed the stairs. Steve could hear Sam's voice – in his earpiece or down the stairs he couldn't tell. He registered the orders that commanded, the words that requested back-up, that took status of the underground procedure.

_"Hostiles are apprehended. We have the western corridors under control."_

_"I need a hand down here. C-Squad, there's too many of them to haul up ourselves. Get your asses into gear."_

_"Perimeter is locked and – wait is that – is that someone -?"_

Steve grit his teeth. He closed his eyes. He prayed that Bucky would get out because it was all he could do. Breath only became possible again when Clint's voice continued with, _"Nothing. It was nothing."_

Then Steve was turning. He strode across the room, skirted around Zola with boots crunching on shattered glass, and twisted the man's arms behind him. Zola protested, cursed in a splutter. "I am injured, you fool!"

Steve ignored him. The zip ties buzzed as he pulled them tight.

"Rogers."

Steve didn't glance towards Nat as she spoke. He couldn't. Hauling Zola to his feet, he clasped him in a firm hold, steading him on his wavering feet.

"Rogers."

He couldn't help it. Steve had to glance out the window. Over the jagged tears of glass, he peered at the spread of openness below. He could still feel his heartbeat, still feel his breath struggle for release, and it was only when he glanced downwards that it eased.

Water. Water drifted below, the slow-moving passage of the river running alongside the warehouse. There wasn't a hint of disturbance, but there wasn't a hint of Bucky either.

It was a good thing, Steve told himself. That was a good thing.

"Steve."

Steve turned. Nat stood as still and wary as she had been, pistol still ready in one hand as the other covered her microphone. Her gaze drew deliberately towards the shattered window before turning back on Steve. "We need to talk about this."

Steve knew that. He had to because, regardless of his intentions, Nat was involved. She was compromised. She'd shot Zola, which was wrong by police standards, but not unnecessary. Not when under duress as Steve had arguably been.

But Steve had let a criminal escape. More than that, he'd urged that criminal to flee. And Nat had witnessed it.

"I know," he said simply, because he did. But not then. They wouldn't talk then. It would come, but not yet, and for the moment Steve found he couldn't care. He didn't care because Bucky…

Bucky had run. He'd left Zola and he'd run. Steve didn't believe that would be the end of it, not for Bucky, but just this once. Just for now, he'd…

Officers flooded the room. Sam appeared at his side, muttering words like "Finishing up" and "Good job". Zola was shunted, writhing and objecting, into the hands of the apprehending.

And across the room, Nat stared at him. They would talk. Not now, but they would talk.


	9. Chapter 9

"I knew. Of course I knew."

Steve stared across the narrow hallway, as wary as he was strangely at ease. It was an impossible combination, but one he often found himself in with Nat. She was a paradox in herself. "What?"

"You've been keeping secrets, Steve. For quite some time, if I'm not wrong."

The hallway was empty, possibly the one hallway in the entirety of Central NYPD that wasn't bustling with officers and office men and women and directors that chose now to finally descend from their exalted thrones. Post-mission clean up was a mess, was chaotic, but in that hallway, for that moment, it was just the two of them.

Steve needed that. He needed it dearly.

Leaning back against the wall, Steve folded his arms across his chest. He wasn't entirely sure if it was in defiance or defence. "You've always been a perceptive person, Nat."

Nat shook her head slowly. "Not really. You're just not good at lying."

"A bad actor?"

"Just guileless, I think."

"Is that a good thing?"

Nat raised a single shoulder. "For you or for me?"

Steve lowered his gaze to stare at his boots. He hadn't bothered to change from his combat gear, even hours after the end of the operation. His watch read nearly ten-thirty and something in Steve's chest urged him to leave, to return to his apartment, but…

Not yet. He couldn't just yet.

"What gave me away?" he said quietly.

"I'm your handler, Steve," Nat said, referencing their official positions as she so rarely did that Steve almost forgot sometimes. "It's my job to know. But if I was going to point it out exactly I'd probably say… before you started leaving early."

Steve glanced up at her without raising his head. "Before?"

Nat nodded. "Before Operation Red Room."

"How much before?"

Her eyes narrowed slightly, considering. "To hazard a guess? I noticed a change in you since we first started working with Loki, to be honest. After Dogend Docks."

Steve uttered a short puff of laughter. Nat was so spot on it was uncanny. "I always did think you were the smartest person in all of SHIELD."

"Well, I used to think you were pretty smart, too."

"Used to?"

Nat shrugged again. "That was before you let a criminal escape right before your eyes. An aggressive criminal, at that."

Steve fought the urge to deny it. It was true, Bucky was aggressive, and deadly, and a member of HYDRA, but he also wasn't. He wasn't because he was so much more than that. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Do?"

"Will you tell Fury or the directors?"

Nat's eyebrow twitched. "You honestly expect me to rout you out? Even if you did let the soldier go?"

Steve twitched. He couldn't help himself; mention of the word, of that name, was like a bitter taste lathering his tongue. So, so wrong. For a heartbeat, Steve hated HYDRA with everything that he was. He hated the word 'soldier' that Nat must have overheard from Zola and thence made the connection, hated the circumstances that had forced Bucky to launch himself out of a goddamn window. He even hated Nat for the briefest of seconds simply for considering Bucky as something so loathsome.

"Don't kill me or anything, Steve."

Steve raised his gaze from where he hadn't even realised they'd fallen back to his boots. "What?"

"You've got the murderous glare thing going on."

Swallowing, Steve struggled to compose himself. "I thought you said I didn't glare."

Nat's eyebrow arched slightly once more. "I guess I was wrong. You've got a killer glare."

Taking a deep breath, Steve fought for composure. "What do you want, Nat?"

"What do I want?"

"What do you want me to say? Are you going to turn me over to Fury, even if not the directors? Have me locked up for undermining the sanctity of an officer's code?"

"The sanctity of a code?" Nat smirked with real amusement. "What code would that be, exactly?"

"You know what I mean."

For the third time, Nat shrugged. "That depends. Are you going to rout me out, too?"

Steve blinked. "Rout you out?"

"Yes."

"For what?"

"For shooting a civilian."

Steve had to drag his mind back from where it was thinking of anything but Zola. He shook his head. "He was a hostile criminal."

"A criminal. Not particularly hostile."

"He had a gun."

"We both know he wouldn't have really used it. He'd probably never fired a pistol in his life."

Steve met Nat's eyes stare for stare. "They're kind of different offences we're considering, here."

Nat leant back against the wall. She cocked her head like a curious bird before a hint of a smile touched her lips. "Maybe. But I'm meeting you halfway, Steve."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why would you do that?"

"Because I'm your handler. It's what I do." A pause, and then, "And because I'm your friend. That's… what we do."

Unbelievable. Natasha Romanoff truly was unbelievable. Steve knew his own perspective of right and wrong were drastically defined – or had been, at least. He'd even acquired his nickname for the righteousness that seemed so blind-sided to his now-wizened self. Nat wasn't quite as persistent with her stance, or at least not about legalities, but she was still an officer. She still had her morals. Steve had known that; he was just surprised they'd drifted in a slightly different direction to what he'd always assumed.

Shaking his head, Steve dropped his arms from their fold and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "That was quite a performance."

"Hm?" Nat hummed, blinking slowly.

"You attacked me with questions when you already knew you weren't going to turn me over."

"A smart man would have already known I wouldn't."

"I thought we'd established I'm not a smart man."

Nat's smile widened. "Quite."

"So that's it?"

"That's it."

"You're not doing anything?"

"I'm not doing anything. This time."

Steve shook his head. He felt the uncontrollable urge to laugh. Once, not being convicted for a crime would have struck him to his core. Now, however – now he knew better. Crimes were as grey as the people who committed them. "Any more questions, then? Anything you'd like to add?"

"Just one thing," Nat said, and her smile grew a little contemplative. "Bucky."

Steve couldn't help but smile in return. A sad smile, but a smile nonetheless. Even sad, he would always smile thinking of Bucky. Just a little. Just in some way. "Yeah."

"I could swear I've heard that name before."

His smile was torn between vanishing forever and spreading wider. "Most likely."

Nat regarded him, and there was something about her expression, about the intent perceptiveness embedded within, that reminded Steve so much of his Bucky. "He's someone special to you?"

Steve closed his eyes. With a sigh, he rocked his head back against the wall. "Nat, you have no idea."

* * *

It wasn't a tidy clean up. The operation of Staten Island was the largest since Ground Base One. Larger than the Red Room and far more successful because they'd acquired Zola. They had an entire warehouse and underground rabbit warren of incriminating rooms. They totalled pounds of heroin, both half-cooked and sale-ready, and in one room every wall was lined with firearms that the bodyguards hadn't been able to access in time for the invasion.

All things told, it was a triumph. It was a success. Still, it didn't feel much like it when Steve raked his fingers through his hair at nine o'clock at night and coaxed himself with the mental mantra, " _Just one more page… just one more page…"_

But things changed from then on. Change had been catalysed. Just as they had after the Red Room, after Ground Base One, it was as though a giant step had been taken and the fluidity of SHIELDs operations grew more and more practiced. The necessity of their field endeavours became all the more so.

Change arose. Vision's decryptions, Tony's unravelling of complex wording, Nat and Wanda's translations, and the hours spent by everyone else combing through files – it all brought about change. Looking back on it weeks later, Steve almost couldn't believe by how much.

While drug busts were still undertaken – spearheaded by the Asgard Squad – and confiscation of weapons that were found more and more frequently in the barrack-like locations dotted across the entirety of New York City, SHIELD turned its gaze upon HYDRA as a whole. It was their duty. It had always been their duty. HYDRA was _their_ mission. Slowly, slowly, as more information was extracted from infiltrated locations and pieces joined like elements of a puzzle, it started to come together.

Steve learned about the wideness of HYDRA's spread. About their infestation like a termite colony, silently chewing through the foundations of the city and sagging it beneath its own weight for HYDRA's benefit. When the lid was flipped, the mound knocked aside, HYDRA scuttled in every which way. It became Steve's job and the job of everyone else in SHIELD to pin them before they fled too far.

They did. So many, many times. Holding was cluttered beneath the weight of their temporary prisoners.

Steve learned about the history of HYDRA, too. Nothing concrete, a history hinted at through those puzzle pieces that reflected, but weren't quite a part of, an even larger puzzle. Bucky hadn't told Steve all that much about HYDRA and its birth, but his facts aligned. That HYDRA had only been in New York for the past decade or so. That it had dribbled across from Russia, flooding across the sea on an eastbound tide from where it had once originated.

Germany had preceded it, and long ago at that; Prussia it had been at the time. The enormity of it was nigh inconceivable to consider, and even harder to contemplate that SHIELD might be able to stopper their activity all but single-handedly. Steve had thought himself surprised by the reality, but he was far from being alone in his sentiment.

"Wait, so you're telling me –" Tony began.

"Just how far have they spread, then?" Clint asked, voice hushed slightly in very telling awe.

"- that HYDRA is, what, it's –"

"Could they have spread further?" Wanda asked, eyes wide and dark in mixed anger and fear. "Not just from Germany into Russia, but _further_?"

" – a fucking global organisation? You've gotta be kidding me. So how –"

"From what I can discern," Vision said, and even he was frowning as he navigated through his computer with rapid fingers, "it has indeed. There has been evidence of HYDRA-like operations both north and south-bound."

" – could we actually overwhelm them? Just how big this is -"

"It all fits into place," Nat said, her expression deceptively mild. "The confidential files from HYDRA's inventory suggest numerous criminal organisations of similar resemblance spread predominantly throughout Europe but also across at least half a dozen states in the US."

"- is so unbelievable I don't think that I would – wait." Tony finally cut himself off from where he had been talking to a half-attending Rhodie. He switched his attention to Nat. "Confidential files? Have you been breaching protocol, Romanoff?"

Nat shrugged. "Don't pretend that you haven't as well."

"Yes, but people expect me to. It would be an insult to my skillset to think that I _didn't_ already have access to those files." Tony pointed a finger at Nat with a frown. "You, on the other hand, are supposed to do what you're told."

"And when have I ever done that, Tony?" Nat replied, and Steve had to glance her way. He might have brushed aside her words as a joke, once, but now he wasn't so sure. He was grateful for it, but it was somewhat disconcerting just how readily she'd allowed his slight to pass unnoticed.

But Steve didn't question it. He had a silently acknowledged comrade in Nat, and he wouldn't blow her cover. Especially when it was only his understanding that she knew that was the only thing keeping him from believing Bucky was a figment of his imagination.

Which he didn't. Not really, because Steve couldn't possibly conceive such a thing. That Bucky wasn't real, had never been, was a fallacy…

But with Bucky gone, sometimes it almost felt like it. Like their nights in Steve's apartment were a comforting dream to stave of the chill of loneliness and abandonment, Steve clung to his memories. Bucky had disappeared and Steve hadn't seen a hint of him in weeks. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not; he remembered the bruise Bucky had worn so casually on his cheek after he'd first shown Steve the underground labyrinth, and that hadn't even been visibly his fault. What would happen to him after his 'mission' was declared a failure?

Steve couldn't think about that. He couldn't let himself, just as he didn't let himself wonder if any of the apprehended criminals spoke of Bucky, if Zola blew his cover, if… if…

He couldn't consider that. He wouldn't. Fortunately, he had more than enough on his plate to keep himself distracted, at least in part.

There were the missions. Then follow-ups. Then general duties around the office and the now-increasingly frequent visits from the directors who had apparently deemed SHIELD now worthy of notice.

There were the interrogations that Steve didn't particularly want to watch but accompanied Nat to when she went, or Sam when he needed to get out of the basement, or Wanda when she'd rubbed her head one too many times after hanging up from her latest phone call.

There was the routine of his gym visits, of his trips home to an empty apartment, his return to work the next day because that was simply what he did now. Alone, rarely sleeping more than an hour or two in one bout, but routine.

And there was Loki.

Thor's brother wasn't needed so much anymore. With the expanding wealth of knowledge SHIELD gleaned of HYDRA, the leads they deduced for themselves, the criminals and doctors and assistants and guards that eventually spoke in interrogation or trial, Loki's nibbles weren't needed. He wasn't apprehended alongside the rest of HYDRA, and dribbles of his dangled intelligence grew less and less integral to their exploits. Loki had almost faded off the grid – until he appeared in the middle of Central NYPD.

He was invited. Of course he was invited, because there was no way that he would have gotten in otherwise. Steve wasn't invited himself to the meeting Loki attended with the Asgard Squad and the directors. None of SHIELD's officers were, even if Fury made a point of attending himself.

Steve did see the man when he emerged, however. When Steve and Sam were returning to the basement from the interrogation rooms because Sam claimed he 'needed a break from his computer, Steve. Seriously,' it was to happen across them as they finished their meeting.

At first, Steve didn't know who he was. A tall, lean man with overlong black hair of a distinctly dyed colour contrasting the wan paleness of his skin, he stood in the middle of the Asgard Squad as the squad themselves passed down the hallway in Steve and Sam's direction. Steve halted, Sam pausing at his side, and they watched them approach.

Loki was the one to notice the first.

The man turned pale eyes towards him, and there was something about him – some sharpness of his features, some faint unnaturalness of his smile – that Steve didn't like. Even had he not possessed prior knowledge, Steve fathomed he would have guessed the man had been a member of HYDRA; he carried the aura of deception, a serpentine edge to the corners of his lips as he trained his gaze upon Steve.

Steve didn't speak. He didn't acknowledge the Asgard Squad until they were all but upon them, and when he did it was only because Thor – booming, demanding, big-as-a-bear and just as noticeable Thor – spoke first. "Captain. Falcon. Such happenstance is indeed fortunate." He raised a hand and clapped it upon the HYDRA man's shoulder, rocking him almost off his feet. "This is my brother, Loki. It is he to which we of the Asgard Squad and yourself of SHIELD owe so much."

Loki couldn't have appeared less like Thor if he'd tried. Even the way he shot a sardonic glance Thor's way was so vastly different from the blunt, direct, and open impression Thor himself wore as to be jarring. He made a point of slipping from beneath Thor's heavy hand before turning back towards Steve and Sam. "Captain and the Falcon. My, what interesting names we have."

"Almost as interesting as Loki," Sam said shortly. Steve could feel him tensing at his side.

Loki's lips spread in a smile that was distinctly shark-like. "Indeed."

Shoving aside his awkwardness, an unease that clung to him like a second skin, Steve straightened his back slightly. "Thor's right. We do owe you, Loki. Thank you for your support in our operation."

"Oh," Loki said, arching an eyebrow. His grin remained affixed. "I assure you, the pleasure's all mine."

"Because HYDRA's being demolished?" Sam said, shifting forwards slightly at Steve's side. Steve could actually feel the tension tangibly radiating from him. "Smart of you to get out while you still could."

"Well, I've always been the brains of the family."

"That he has," Thor said, entirely overlooking the underhanded slight as he clasped his hand upon Loki's shoulder once more. "That he has indeed. If you'll excuse us, however, we have a meeting to attend."

"A very important meeting," Loki added, mockery not quite hidden from his tone. Steve didn't miss that each of the squad members behind him tensed just slightly themselves. "If you'll excuse us, gentleman."

Then Loki was slipping from beneath Thor's hand once more to stride between Steve and Sam, continuing down the hallway. The Asgard Squad followed behind him, and Thor's voice, overloud as ever and vibrant in good-humour, rose before they'd disappeared around the distant corner.

"Well," Sam said flatly. "He's creepy."

"That was the impression I was left with, yes," Steve agreed, staring into the emptiness of their passage. It was true; Loki seemed to embody HYDRA in a way that went beyond his actions and simply settled upon his countenance.

"I hope your guy wasn't like him."

Steve glanced towards Sam sharply. "What?"

Sam gestured after Loki with a slight tip of his head. "You'd have more common sense than that, wouldn't you? Didn't hook up with a creepy psycho, right?"

For a brief flicker of a second, Steve felt overwhelmed by anger. Only for a second, however, a moment of irrational hatred towards Sam just as he'd felt to Nat when she'd called Bucky 'the soldier'. Then it faded and he shook his head. "No. He isn't."

"He?" Sam said, but as Steve didn't expand he dropped the train of thought. "He's alright, yeah? You haven't heard much from him from what I've seen. No new intel?"

Steve struggled not to wince, to curse, to scowl at the world and spout objections about unfairness. Bucky hadn't ever believed in fairness in the first place. "He's gone to ground."

Sam stared at him for a moment before nodding slowly. "Probably a good thing."

"Probably," Steve echoed, and that was the end of that conversation.

Steve missed Bucky. He missed him sorely in a different way to how he had as a child who'd lost their best friend. It was more than just the sex. It was more even than the unawareness of whether Bucky was actually was safe and… and alright. Steve simply wanted to be around him; to touch him, to feel the weight of him pressed against his fingertips and the warmth of skin contrasting the eternal coldness of cybernetic metal.

No one in SHIELD would understand that. Even Nat, knowing that Steve had let Bucky go, that he was special to him, wouldn't understand. She didn't even know the half of it. No one knew of the history they shared, recent or that of the long past. Steve ached to simply talk to someone about him, to revisit the idea that he was actually real.

Opportunity came in the form of Anna Erskine.

Steve's aunt had aged well. Still plump, still homely, she swept into Central NYPD of an unexpected morning with the scent of slightly burnt cookies a perfume surrounding her. No one questioned her entrance as she passed through the entrance hall with a smile and a cheery wave, nor as she descended the elevator to the SHIELD basement and greeted everyone within in a bright announcement of her presence. Anna didn't abide the kind of privacy that SHIELD instilled; such rules simply didn't affect her. Even Fury didn't bat an eyelid at her arrivals anymore.

Steve had barely risen from the seat at his desk before he was engulfed in an embrace that still managed to squeeze the breath from him. Smiling, because Anna always induced a certain degree of joy even in the darkest days, he dropped his chin briefly atop her greyed head and squeezed her back. No one teased Steve for his aunt's arrival. Everyone loved Anna in their own way.

"It's been far too long since you've visited, Steve," Anna said, finally drawing away. She beamed up at him with her wide smile that erased the wrinkles around her eyes and lining her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," Steve said, gesturing to his chair in invitation as he propped himself against the edge of his desk. "I've been busy with work."

"I assumed so," Anna said, nodding understandingly. "Between you and Abraham, I feel as though my entire life revolves around the fact that _yours_ both revolve around work."

"Uncle Abraham's been busy?"

"Working round the clock," Anna said with a sigh, folding her hands atop her basket of burnt baked goods. "Some days I think he'll never retire. He just loves it far too much."

Steve could understand that. He couldn't ever imagine ever retiring either. He'd be another Fury, he thought, ageing but still maintaining his vitality for his work, despite his balding head and deteriorating eyesight. Even older than Fury, perhaps – Steve considered he'd likely be an officer until he died.

"You must be lonely," Steve said. "How have you been, Auntie?"

That was all the invitation that Anna needed. Gifting Steve with another warm smile, she leaped into an animated reiteration of her typical week – her book club, her cooking group, her Wednesday tea-and-biscuit meetings with her age-old school friends. Steve let her speak; he had work to do, it was true, but it was nice to simply see her, to hear about something other than HYDRA and the latest stories of drug deals and speculations of HYDRA's involvement in those dealings.

Nice. Removed.

"… we're going to go to the art museum next Tuesday, which should be exciting, I think," Anna was saying.

Steve, drawing his attention from where it had only half drifted elsewhere – Anna could run like a steam train when she got onto a particular subject – he smiled again. "That sounds like fun."

"It should be," Anna agreed, nodding enthusiastically. Then she paused. Squinting up at Steve slightly, she pursed her lips. "But what about you, Steve? How have you been?"

"Other than swamped beneath work?" Steve said with a hint of resignation.

"You look worn through. Are you getting enough sleep?"

"I'm fine, Auntie."

"You haven't been unwell?"

"No, I'm fine," Steve held out a hand in offering as he knew Anna always liked to do, simply to be comforted by contact. "I told you, I did my time being sick as a kid. I promised never again."

"Well, I don't think that's how it works," Anna said, patting his hand fondly, "but I'll believe you this time."

"Thanks."

"But?"

Steve stared at her questioningly. "Sorry?"

"But. What's on your mind, dear? Something is making you unwell, even if it's not a sickness."

Steve uttered a mental sigh. Was he that obvious? Was it truly so apparent how much Steve wouldn't admit he was hurting for Bucky's absence? How much it scared him? He could barely admit it to himself, because to do so would be to validate the possibility that something _could_ have happened.

"It's nothing," Steve said quietly. "Just…"

"Just?"

This time, Steve sighed aloud. Abruptly, he didn't care for silences. He didn't care that his colleagues dotted the room, even if he knew they were all turning a deaf ear upon his conversation with Anna. He longed, he _needed_ , and Anna was just the person to help him.

"Auntie, do you remember my old friend Bucky?"

Steve needed to talk. He needed someone to listen. He needed to remember Bucky without the weight of HYDRA hanging over the both of them. And Anna seemed to recognise that, even without an explanation for why.

She smiled, patting his hand gently once more before squeezing it with her surprisingly strong fingers. "Of course I do, dear. Tell me all about it."

* * *

Steve's steps pounded the concrete floor, echoing off empty walls and into empty rooms. His breath came heavily, his heartbeat thudding in his ears, but not with frustration this time. Resignation. Exasperation.

Again? It had happened again?

" _Pull back, Rogers."_

Steve ignored Nat's voice in his ear. Skidding to a stop in the dim hallway before the only door visible, he thrust his shoulder into the solid wood of it. Once. Twice. It folded beneath the battering force, splintering, and he burst through to find –

Nothing. It was empty but for a table, a chair seated at an angle as though the sitter hadn't bothered replacing it properly before leaving. The darkness of the underground room was made even more so than in the hallway.

"You've got to be kidding me," Steve muttered to himself.

 _"You the same?"_ Sam said, the same exasperation touching his own tone. _"I got nothing_."

 _"We're done for the night, boys,"_ Nat said. _"There's no one here._ "

Steve grunted, turned on his heel, and started out the door once more. He was running before his heavy boots even struck the concrete floor of the hallway.

Again. Again it had happened, that they'd arrived at a HYDRA base to find nothing. The directions were all clear and HYDRA _should_ have been there, but they weren't. They weren't because, in all likelihood, they'd fled. It wouldn't be the first time and it likely wouldn't be the last. Steve had hounded HYDRA's tail for months, for years, and only recently had success been a commonality rather than an impossibility. That HYDRA had fled? Once it would have been a taunt, spitting in the face of SHIELD and the police force for their feeble attempts at apprehension. Now Steve was left with a very different impression from their actions:

They'd fled. Actually fled, because SHIELD was one-upping them time and time again. It was as simple as that. Sometimes, Steve wondered just how many more pits of snakes there were to unearth, especially when so many bases had already been overturned and dozens of HYDRA members forced behind bars. Where the residents of that particular bunker had disappeared to was a mystery, but…

Resignation. Exasperation. Not frustration, because frustration would suggest the HYDRA had enough strength, retaliated profoundly enough, that anger was warranted. They didn't. Not anymore. Sometimes Steve wondered if they really were overwhelming them.

It seemed an impossible feat yet so tantalisingly close.

Shouldering through another door, Steve burst into a stairwell and, leaping two, three, four steps at a time, descended to the lower storey. Into another room – empty – around another corner and into deeper gloom illuminated only with thin, guttering fluorescence. Past another room – empty, a seat abandoned, a mug overturned on the table – and onwards.

_"Steve, enough. They're not here and that's not a bad thing."_

"I'm just checking, Nat," Steve puffed between steps. He stuck his head into another room, surprisingly unlocked, and unsurprisingly found nothing. He pushed himself from the doorframe and down the hallway at a run once more. "There might be something –"

 _"It doesn't matter. We don't need the lead._ "

 _"It was a dribble anyway, Steve,"_ Sam added to Nat's words.

_"Officers Marwick and Li have already left. We're done here."_

Steve stumbled a step for a second before righting himself and, shoving his way into the stairwell once more, the _final_ stairwell, began his descent. "They left without –"

 _"Without us, yes."_ Nat's curtness bespoke her disapproval of such behaviour. _"And unfortunately that means we need to withdraw too. Steve?"_

"Just one more," Steve said, starting down the hallway beneath its own thinly guttering light. Skewed shadows leaped across the walls. "I've just got one more floor."

 _"I'll go and get him,"_ Sam said with a sigh. _"Hold tight, Nat. We'll be there in a few."_

Steve clenched his jaw but made no reply to Sam's words, even if _that_ frustrated him a little. Even if he hated being treated like a dog with a bone. He ignored his friends and continued. Room, after room, after room.

Nothing. There was nothing left, but Steve still had to check.

He ground to a halt at the final door, heavy breaths not solely a product of exertion. Jimmying the handle, he found it open and, with a pronounced push, stepped inside.

Empty. It was empty, and expectedly so. Empty, except for…

Sam caught up with him in barely a minute. He mustn't have been far away, had perhaps even expected he would need to drag Steve from the scene. Steve heard his rapid footsteps on the unyielding floors as he approached but didn't glance his way as he felt him enter the room. He couldn't quite bring himself to drag his gaze from the wall.

"You sure like to make a man run," Sam said, slowing as he stepped to Steve's side. "Couldn't have set up shop a few floors – aw, you've gotta be shitting me."

Steve agreed. He'd been of much the same mind as Sam when he'd noticed the smear of red painting the wall, the HYDRA symbol of skull and curling tentacles in sharp relief. _That_ was a taunt, even if the fleeing of the culprits was genuine. Steve had grown to hate that symbol.

But he couldn't quite. Not at that moment. Not when, scrawled beneath in the same smears of red just visible in the feeble light of the underground base, the words left for him were like a soothing balm.

 _"See you next time._ "

A taunt, too. Likely perceived as much by Sam, because it was. But Steve recognised the handwriting. Even in paint, even upon a wall in poor lighting, he recognised it. And he couldn't help but smile just a little even if Sam would likely think him slipping into insanity for it.

It wasn't much, was barely anything, and far beneath Bucky's actual presence, but it was something. For Steve, that something was infinitely better than nothing.

_Next time, Buck._

* * *

HYDRA was slowly losing their heads. Their evidence grew less and less pronounced.

Weeks turned into months. Winter into summer and then back again. So much had changed – in the city, in SHIELD, in HYDRA.

But more than that, Bucky disappeared. Just like that, Steve didn't see him again – not once since the operation on Staten Island when he'd dived through the window to escape. One way or another, Bucky always seemed to be leaving Steve through a window, and even if the markings on the walls of a basement promised his continued survival, it wasn't enough to only _know_.

But it was a price to pay. To overwhelm HYDRA, that was the price. Steve only selfishly wished it wasn't so high.

Berlin was oddly beautiful at night. Many cities were, Steve had grown to realise, but for some reason he hadn't thought it would be. It was a clean city, he'd found. Comfortable, even, in a way that was entirely different from New York City. There was a spread of diversity in structure and people, and the tourist accommodations presented themselves in more than just sleeping arrangements.

"Germany has the largest populous in the EU, you know," Nat said as they were given the go to take the trip. She spoke as though the fact was something that Steve needed to know and smirked as she spoke, as though she expected him to object. "Just thought it was an interesting titbit of information to be aware of. Gross wages in Berlin are on the rise, too."

"The number of IT start-up companies in Berlin are the largest in all of Germany," Vision added, jumping onto Nat's statistical bandwagon.

"It's a pretty popular university city, too," Clint called needlessly from across the room. "Just for your information. Pretty top notch, and most popular in Germany, or so I've heard. Second most popular city for young adults to live in, apparently."

"It's got an air pollution program, you know," Bruce contributed from his office, not even bothering to stick his head through the doorway. "A leader in carbon dioxide reduction."

"Why the fuck do all of you know this?" Sam said, speaking the sentiment that Steve suppressed with difficulty.

"It's only right to look into a country and city before taking a trip there yourself," Rhodie said. He shook his head as he spoke, however, as though agreeing with Sam's words. "And seeing as a good chunk of our team's taking the time to go…"

"Three of us," Sam pointed out. "There's three of us going. And not any of you, I might add." He swept a finger around the lounging members of the SHIELD basement.

"Selfish of you," Tony said, launching a pen in Sam's direction that Sam expertly dodged. "Germany's ranked the fourth best country in the world, did you know? I'm jealous of you assholes going without me."

"Says the man who could jump in his private jet and fly there at any time he wished," Wanda said with a roll of her eyes.

"Technically, it's my father's jet," Tony said, pointing another pen at Wanda. "So no, I couldn't, actually. He's an asshole, too. But I'd be more than happy to pay for your flight if you wished to accompany me, Ms Red Witch."

"Are you flirting with me, Tony?" Wanda said, arching an eyebrow. "Because you know I'll steal you for all you're worth."

"Which is the very reason I would never even consider tempting fate," he said. "But no, actually, I'm just being nice."

"Nice?" Rhodie said, smiling slowly.

"Nice."

"Nice?" Sam mimicked.

Tony threw his second pen.

The fact of the matter was that Steve didn't have a problem with the country itself. He'd never been before, but it wasn't for any sort of dislike. Abraham always spoke of his home country fondly, and had asked Steve to accompany him on his sporadic returns on frequent occasions, but Steve had always declined. First it had been because of school, then the academy, then work had gotten in the way. Not even when Anna sighed her regret would he bend his neck.

When work called, however, Steve stepped up to the party. His neck was already bent for him.

It was with trepidation that he'd stepped from the plane into the busy airport, however. A persistent frown had plagued him as he'd taken the cab from that airport through the equally busy streets to their local hotel, and continued to accompany to him when he'd checked into the refined suite that was solely his. Nat's room was stationed on one side of his own and Sam's on the other, but they'd already turned in for the night.

"It's late," Nat said.

"Jetlag can be a real bitch," Sam added, and then they'd disappeared. Tomorrow would be a significant day, after all.

And yet Steve's wariness kept him awake.

It wasn't because of the city, or the people, or because he knew only a smattering of the language that he'd made an effort to pick up over the past months. It wasn't because he felt threatened – because he didn't – or because he hadn't travelled towards another country before – because he had. It lay in the very reason that he, Nat, and Sam were visiting the _Landespolizei_ as representatives of SHIELD. Tomorrow, that very next day, would be a long meeting with the German police force.

HYDRA wasn't dead in New York City. It likely wouldn't die for a long time, much to Steve's regret, even if its appearances were rapidly minimising. But it was never too soon to chase an organisation to its roots.

So Steve went. Under Fury's orders, which he claimed came from the higher-ups but were really simply Fury's orders, Steve came to Berlin. He regretted being away from his home city, but it was necessary. And besides, the main reason he wanted to stay in the city over leaving even briefly, even for work, even to help people because it was the Right Thing To Do, wasn't even there.

Steve hadn't seen Bucky in months. _Months_. It hurt on a level that Steve hadn't even known was possible.

He wanted to see Bucky again. To really see him, without the weight of HYDRA resting upon them both. He wanted to be able to touch him without hiding it, to kiss him and know that it didn't matter because he _could_ and it wasn't wrong to do so. That it didn't matter who Bucky was or who he worked for, because that they were together was what really mattered

He wanted to see Bucky in the light of day. It had only been the once, just in passing and so briefly months before. Twice, if Steve counted the barest moments in the Staten Island warehouse. Had Steve known just how precious such sightings would be, he would have appreciated them more.

Steve wanted that. He wanted it sorely. Now, however, he would appreciate even the chance to see Bucky at all. To feel him. To touch him and know he was real. There were so many questions he had to ask, far too many than Bucky could ever match himself, and not at all about HYDRA. Not about the missions or about what degree of intel Bucky could provide for him.

Steve wanted to know about Bucky. He wanted to know what had happened to him over the past fourteen years and he wanted to hear it from _him_ rather than cold, heartless files. He wanted to listen as Bucky spoke because he _wanted_ to speak, not because his answers were bartered for, and Steve wanted to be told of every aspect of Bucky that he'd had never seen, never understood, as a child.

He wanted to see Bucky smile. To hear him laugh. It was only more starkly apparent that he'd neither seen nor heard either of that before Bucky had disappeared entirely once more.

But not forever, Steve told himself. It couldn't be forever. Not again. He didn't know where Bucky had gone, but he would find him if he had to. He wouldn't leave it up to chance like they'd been subjected to months – over a year – before. He wouldn't leave it up to necessity, as had been the nature of their rekindled friendship in his childhood hospital. If Steve had to, he'd take to doing the searching all by himself.

Besides, being in SHIELD, he knew a guy or two. One of them would surely have something up their sleeve. As Steve stepped into the refined hotel room, taking in the wide television across from the equally wide bed, the neat pair of nightstands and the counter decked out in microwave, coffee machine, and neatly stacked mugs, he thought of that much. He was constantly thinking of such, even as he poked his head into the adjoining bathroom and flicked a light on to illuminate a spread of glisteningly white tiles and a ridiculously large shower cubicle.

Steve was still lost in thought as a passing moment changed everything.

He didn't believe in miracles. Not of the Godly kind, nor the supernatural. He sometimes believed in coincidence and oftentimes considered fate to be responsible. Which one of these it was that catalysed the beginning of the rest of his life, Steve wasn't sure. All of them, perhaps, or none.

A voice that spoke with casual familiarity as it always did. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were following me."

For a long moment, Steve had to close his eyes. A long, long moment, because if he didn't, he thought he might throw himself across the room and leap at the window. Not that it would matter. Not that it would really matter if he fell through the window, because Bucky would be taken with him.

Steve knew he sat on the windowsill even before he turned. He hadn't needed Bucky to speak to know that was where he would be. He _felt_ him there.

Slowly, in a measured motion, Steve turned from the bathroom. The suite behind him was brightly lit, and so, for perhaps the first time since the streets of New York what seemed so long ago, Steve saw Bucky in the light. In combat gear – _always_ combat gear – of heavy boots and buckles and sheaths, some not quite hidden beneath his clothing. He was actually perched on the windowsill, fingers holding the edge loosely and legs crossed at the ankles. It was exactly the same as every other time Bucky had climbed through Steve's window, except -

This was Berlin.

There were so many questions that Steve should have asked. Bucky was in Berlin which meant that at least part of HYDRA definitely was, too. Who was he working for? What was HYDRA up to? If Steve asked, would Bucky give him a lead?

But Steve didn't think that. He didn't think any of that, couldn't when Bucky stood right before him. The one thing that resounded over and over in his mind drowned out any thoughts of criminals and work: what the hell was Bucky doing in Berlin? Why wasn't he with _Steve?_

"I'm following you?" Steve said, and was surprised at how casual his voice sounded. He didn't feel casual. His heart was beating faster in his chest than it did on a mission, an imperceptible tremble actually thrumming through his fingers. He _desperately_ wanted to throw himself across the room, but common sense – and the knowledge that he was three stories up from the sidewalk below – gave him pause. He didn't want to hurt Bucky by landing upon him, after all. "I didn't even know where you were."

"Berlin, as it happens," Bucky said. Obviously. Casually. He sounded casual because he likely was.

Steve swallowed. He should say something intelligent, but all that came out was, "I didn't know where you were." It sounded almost like a croak.

Bucky's expression didn't soften. It never quite changed all that much anymore, never into a smile and rarely even into a smirk. Expressionless was what the _soldat_ was, and Steve understood that now, at least in part. It hurt, but he understood it. Truthfully, he was happy just to understand anything.

"Shit went down, Stevie," Bucky said quietly. "Sorry I couldn't call."

"You don't even have my number."

"Not that kind of call, then."

Steve nodded slightly, swallowing the thickness in his throat again. "Sorry I didn't call either."

"You don't have my number."

Steve smiled, but he barely felt it. "Yeah, I don't at that." Shaking his head, he took one step, two steps, towards Bucky. "How did you even know I was here?"

Bucky shrugged. He was staring at Steve with that same unblinking attentiveness he had when Steve had first pulled him into his room. It felt somehow different this time. "HYDRA knows everything in Berlin. They've buried deep after a century or so."

"They do? HYDRA?"

"Well, not HYDRA, exactly. They call themselves something different here. You worked it out yet?"

It was Steve's turn to shrug. "I guess that's why I'm here." Another step, and another, and then he was almost within reaching distance. "What are you here for?"

Bucky's lips quirked just slightly to the side in a downward tug. "You don't want to know, Steve."

 _I do,_ Steve thought, even if he considered that perhaps he might not. It was a confounding paradox; Steve wanted to know both because of the Wrongness of what was being done and because it was Bucky, but he also didn't for those exact reasons. The thought was confusing even to himself – Steve hated thinking of Bucky killing people – and so he didn't voice it at all.

Instead, he made a show of peering over Bucky's shoulder. "How did you even get up here, by the way?"

"Climbed your hair, Rapunzel," Bucky replied. "Didn't you hear me calling?"

"I didn't, unfortunately."

"Very unfortunate. It's quite a climb without a rope."

Steve took the remaining step across the distance between then. "That's quite an effort you've made, then," he said quietly, not quite jokingly, as he propped both hands on either side of the window, framing Bucky's perch. It was all he could do not to reach out and grab him just to hold him. How long had it been? How damn long? "Are you coming in? Staying the night?"

Bucky regarded him, his dark eyes so familiar. There was no visible sparkle within his gaze, nothing like he'd worn as a child, but somehow Steve saw it anyway. Bucky didn't need to wear his emotions quite so blatantly anymore for Steve to see them. "Is that an official question?"

Steve chuckled lowly. "What am I up to now?"

"I've lost track."

"No you haven't."

Bucky's lips twitched just slightly. "No, I haven't. You top me by one-hundred and twenty-three."

Steve shook his head. He couldn't help but lean into Bucky until their foreheads were nearly touching. Anything, anything just to feel the heat of him _here_. There was so much shit going on in the world, so much HYDRA with roots so deeply embedded that Steve didn't think they'd ever be torn loose, but for a brief moment in time, he didn't care.

"That's quite a discrepancy," he murmured, breathing in Bucky's breath as Bucky exhaled.

"It is."

"We'll have to do something about that. But for now," Steve rested a hand upon Bucky's arm, upon one and then the other, feeling the contrast of hardness between each hand. Muscle and metal. Warm and cold. "I think I'll happily bump it up to one-hundred and twenty-four."

"That's your question, then?"

"Yes. Your answer?"

Bucky paused. He contemplated. There was so much between them and Steve saw it all in that moment. He saw the breadth of HYDRA that, though rapidly growing constricted in its reach throughout New York, extended above and beyond, the end not even on the horizon. He saw the unshakeable division between himself and Bucky that couldn't be shed even had they wanted to because Bucky was still a part of HYDRA, Steve still of SHIELD.

He saw the time they'd spent apart. The times Bucky had disappeared and Steve had feared it would be forever. He saw the possibility for it happening all over again, for this wasn't the end. It wasn't the end by half, and they still had so far to go.

But not yet. Bucky wasn't leaving him just yet, and Steve saw the truth of that in the slight tilt of Bucky's head. He saw it in the slight twitch of his lips as the beginning of a smile, a motion so small it was barely visible at all. Not a smirk this time; it was definitely almost a smile.

And he heard it in Bucky's voice when he said, "Yeah. I guess so."

Steve pulled him through the window and into his room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Well!! This was a very long story posted in a very, very short amount of time.   
> Thank you so, so much for reading, for sticking it out throughout the entire epic, and for actually (hopefully) liking it enough that you DID read it. I'm really blessed to have as many people read this as I have because... well, long fics can often be a bit of a challenge, no?  
> For anyone who hasn't already, please give the wonderful Mithborien's work (mithborien.tumblr.com) a look! They've been more than wonderful in creating art for this story and I couldn't thank them enough!
> 
> Thanks once again for reading. If you get the chance, I would really, really appreciate a comment to let me know your thoughts! Anything and everything would be very much appreciated. Thank you!!


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